


Help Me?

by RiaZ



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series), Thomas Sanders
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Magic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-06-21 21:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 90,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15566484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaZ/pseuds/RiaZ
Summary: Everything had gone to hell.Flaming, burning hell.Roman brushed his hair out of his eyes, ignoring the way that sweat had tousled into what surely, a while ago, would have sent him into bouts of panic. He knew that he should have cared.He didn’t.*******************Roman remembers the first time he met the one - as well as their royal friend, the smart bane of his existence, and the adorable friend that loves all of them dearly. But even as they all fall into place, a royal court never seen before, it still ends up in one place.A burning world.How did it get here? And where will it go?





	1. 0 Years, 0 Months and 0 Days - The Burning

Everything had gone to hell.

Flaming, burning hell.

Roman brushed his hair out of his eyes, ignoring the way that sweat had tousled into what surely, a while ago, would have sent him into bouts of panic. He knew that he should have cared. 

He didn’t.

Not as he watched the flames crawl higher along the skyline, burning the town and surrounding villages. Not as he had difficultly breathing, the smoke in the air constricting. But he didn’t care – the castle was stone; it would not burn.

Instead, the people would.

Roman felt rather than saw his companion – his captive – draw closer to join him in looking out of the glass doors to the balcony. He wished Thomas hadn’t; not as Roman heard his breath catch and shudder in his throat. If Roman ever had to assign a noise to heartbreak, it would have been the sudden change in Thomas’s breathing. It went from the shuddering and deep breaths that stumbled from his throat into shallow pants, like his very soul was rebelling.

But still they looked out towards the dark night, seeing the castle courtyard spanning out below them – and beyond that, the night wasn’t so dark anymore. Fire had that effect. Thomas’s kingdom was burning; flames reached steadily higher and higher, scorching the flags that normally hung so tall and proud. 

For a moment, Roman regretted it. For a moment, he wished that everything hadn’t played out to be exactly as they had. 

Then he again focused on his and Thomas’ reflections in the glass instead of the burning world beyond, and that thought fled as quickly as the rest of Thomas’ court had. How quickly those ministers had turned tail and ran the moment that Roman had turned his sword to jab Thomas in his back, a dagger placed under his throat. 

Thomas was still wearing his crown – a far bigger one than the delicate band that Roman had first met him in. Roman awaited the normal surge of jealousy that awoke whenever he dared give that crown more than a second of thought – but it did not come. The grief, true and endless, that was drowning in Thomas’ eyes perhaps hinted that a crown was more a burden than a gift. 

But it didn’t matter.

Not when beyond the burning town surrounding the palace, Roman could see the amassing army, preparing to storm the palace and rescue their beloved King. Roman felt his lip curl as he turned from the glass, banishing the sight of him and Thomas looking together at what had been done from his mind. 

“Any moment now, Your Highness,” Roman snarled, tasting the foulness of the words on his tongue. He felt Thomas flinch – for the way that he’d spat his title, for the way that Roman had twisted so suddenly from his side. It didn’t matter that Roman had threatened his life, kidnapped him and secluded him in the room overlooking his burning kingdom; it was as though Thomas still wanted to believe that Roman had the same kindness that he’d seen when he was young. 

Thomas reached a hand towards Roman – he saw his hand move slowly, like a bird hesitant to start flying, in the mirror of the dresser. But before Roman could allow that touch, allow his walls to be broken down as he knew that they would by his King given half a chance, he shrugged away. Thomas was worth nothing. He glanced at himself in the mirror – the emptiness of his eyes. Then at the curious shade of Thomas’s eyes, narrowed into a wary stare. Roman could almost hear the thoughts working behind those brown eyes – could sense them.

“Believe me, I know,” Roman replied to those unspoken thoughts, drawing himself up. He was not going to just stand there being judged. “I’ve sunk pretty low – but whatever I’ve done, you deserve.”

“Roman –“

“Quiet!” He snarled. “I’m the bad guy – that’s fine. It’s no fault of mine, and some justice at last will be served.”

“Please, listen!” Thomas broke his silence, reaching to grab Roman’s hand – but Roman jerked away yet again. He needed silence – he needed his mind to himself – he needed the flames to cool and soothe – he needed the others to understand. But instead, Roman stiffened, reaching behind him to grab his black cloak, looking back out towards the window where he could only barely make out the armies beginning to move. 

Even without checking, he knew who’d be leading those armies.

“It’s time to step up,” he murmured to that little leader, so far in the distance, “or it’s time to back down – and there’s only one answer for me.” 

There had ever only been one answer for Roman – but it didn’t change the fact that he kept his eyes dead and away from Thomas, still reaching out to him from the middle of the room. Roman kept talking – to himself, to Thomas, to that faraway answer to his prayers, he didn’t know. “I’ll stand up and fight, because I know that I’m right – and I’m ready.” 

He opened the glass doors, the repulsive air and the sounds of people screaming wafting up to meet him. “I’m ready,” he said again. It sounded false even to his own ears – and he didn’t need to look behind him to know that Thomas had fallen to his knees at the sounds of his people suffering. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he amended.

That sounded better.

Better than the screaming.


	2. 12 Years, 3 Months and 4 Days until Burning

The trouble with having little is that it only gave Roman more inspiration to dream big. 

Dreaming was always infinitely better than the world in which he lived; in his world, the best he could hope for was to steal a roll of bread quietly from the bakers, or pinch fruit from the market stalls. But when he slept – fitfully, curled in some corner of an alley – there was no limit to what he could do. 

It was no wonder that Roman managed to make a lot of enemies – acting and speaking like a prince, when in fact he was little more than a common thief. The people’s state of living had improved during the last century, under the kind King – and the people were hopeful that it would further still improve under the reign of his son. 

But that didn’t matter when Roman had nothing apart from the clothes on his back and his big dreams.

On the day that it started to make sense, Roman had been running through the streets of one of the towns on the outskirts of the kingdom, fleeing from the various thieves and thugs that he’d mistakenly walked into. It had been his fault entirely – he’d known that there was a street infamous for housing the worst of the worst criminals when they crept in from the surrounding marsh land. But somehow, thanks to the knives that he’d seen them draw, Roman doubted they’d listen to apologies.

So he flew down the roads, aiming for nowhere in particular, his breaths coming in short and rapid pants. In his mind’s eye, he could almost feel where a pair of wings were attached to the base of his shoulder blades, could feel the current of the wind as it danced through his hair. 

In reality, however, he scaled the wall barring the public from the marshes and continued running. The sudden change in terrain strained his ankles, the new dynamic of the soft land odd from the unforgiving cobblestone.

At least, that’s what Roman would later use as an excuse as to why he tripped – ‘the new terrain was hard to adjust to!’ But all that went through his mind as he suddenly wasn’t in contact with the ground anymore was a four-letter word that relied on the letter ‘f’ to start it. 

Roman fell right into a shallow pool of what he feverishly hoped was water but felt that his optimism would not quite compensate for the distinct yellow tone of the water. His clothes – already shameful enough for a boy who dreamt of satin and white linen – fell about him wetly, causing a wave of disgust to coarse through him.

“I think the prince has fallen,” a voice leered, floating above the weak fog that were prone to haunt the marshes. “What a pity; I had hoped he’d get away.” Half-attempting to get up, Roman could see no clear way out of his situation. Everything in him roared to get up and fight them – to grab a stick or sword or anything – but there was a little voice that told him that sometimes, the best situation was to get out of a bad one. “Aha,” that same voice said, and Roman’s heart froze as he looked up to see one of his followers on the ridge above. 

Roman wouldn’t let himself cower. He straightened up, ignoring the way that his clothes clung to him, and drew his shoulders back, tilted his chin higher. He met the guy’s stare straight on, not daring to flinch back from the poisonous green – or was it yellow? – of his eyes. 

“I don’t think you want to be here,” another voice said. 

Yellow eyes tore from Roman’s own brown eyes to glare at the newcomer. This newcomer – whoever he was – knew how to make an entrance. His silhouette slanted against the darkness of the fog, casting a shadow that was long enough to just reach Yellow Eye’s toes. 

“You,” Yellow said. Roman did not miss the way that his voice wavered – from confidence to insecurity and back again. “I thought you were out to play today.”

“And yet it looks like you are the one who has a new toy.” 

Roman bristled at the newcomer, even though it was his presence that was steadily forcing Yellow eyes to take a step back – and another. “I am not a toy,” Roman muttered, to which the man with the black cloak and yellow eyes snickered. 

“I shall leave you to play with him, then,” Yellow eyes said, turning on his heel. Distantly, Roman could hear him ordering people around, ordering them back to whatever pit of hell they crawled out of.

He then turned his attention onto the newcomer, who had forgone all drama and had started walking forward. He lightly stepped down the ridge that Roman had somehow not seen, stopping three paces away. Roman tried not to feel like something on the market shelves as the newcomer’s eyes – brown, like his own, but darker – swept over him. 

The shadows underneath the boy’s eyes exaggerated the paleness of his skin, so in the light of the sun – he almost glowed. Roman did not let him see the flicker of fear that he felt, however – this was a boy that could make grown criminals turn a heel and go. This fragile, thin creature hadn’t even needed to look at his assailants before sending them packing.

And yet the boy held out one of those long-fingered hands towards him, beckoning him out of the not-water. “Come on,” the strange boy said, curling his fingers. Roman suddenly grasped the hand, not caring about how cold his rescuer’s skin was – instead, he grimaced at the mud covering his own skin and how dark it looked against this boy’s clean, white hands. “Yes, they’re cold – but unfortunately for you, there isn’t another option,” he said, dark eyes flashing in ire as he misinterpreted Roman’s distress. 

The boy dropped Roman’s hand the instant that he was on his feet, mud dripping wetly from his scraps of clothing. Roman opened his mouth – to thank him for the help, for scaring the others away with a single glare. But all that tumbled out was – “who are you?”

Roman found himself strangely entranced at the way that the boy’s mouth twisted as he snorted. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I know where you can go to get some help – some quiet help, the kind that won’t talk about how you tripped and fell on your face as you fled from some idiots.”

“As long as I don’t have to sell my soul,” Roman said, the meagre joke falling flat against the silence of the marshes. The boy shot him an unimpressed look that struck him almost stupid – Roman had been looked down upon, sure, but never dismissed so entirely. Even his enemies had the good sense to be wary of him and the lengths that he’d go to get what he wanted. 

“Something tells me that your soul wouldn’t be worth much.”

Now it was Roman’s turn to snort as the boy started to walk away – not towards the town as Roman had expected, but deeper into the marsh. “And what would you know about the worth of souls?”

The boy dipped his head a little deeper and shot him a sidelong glance. Roman raised his eyebrows in response, ignoring the way that he wanted to look more into the shadows below his eyes, into the way that the boy bit the inside of his cheek. “Dangerous talk for the marshes,” the boy said, climbing over a root with nimble ease. Although he never walked faster than a slow, unwilling swagger, there was something endearing about the way that his eyes searched back and forth along the path that he was taking. “That means that you’re either stupid, or brave.”

“Brave, obviously,” Roman replied, drawing his shoulders back despite himself and the mud still dripping from his clothes. 

The boy scanned him again – for the numerous time. “You’re definitely stupid enough to be brave.” 

“Being brave does not warrant being stupid,” Roman said, indigence drawing into his tone. Who exactly was this boy, walking around insulting everyone? And in the marshes, of all places! 

“Being brave means going into a decision where everything is stacked against you; tell me how that is not entirely stupid.” 

They bickered senselessly for the next few minutes, climbing over protruding roots and fallen trees as they went further and further from the town’s safety. Roman felt a flush creeping over his neck and face that had little to do with the exercise; the blunt uncaring boy’s tone set something off in his chest that made Roman want to roar at him. 

“Here,” the boy said, cutting Roman off mid-rant, pointing upwards. Roman glanced around before looking up – at some point, they’d entered the small gathering of trees that were surprisingly tall, given their surroundings. The boy shot Roman an unamused look and then, without warning, a shout came from above.

“Are you back again? Didn’t I tell you to go away?” 

Roman sniggered, watching as the boy rolled his eyes in response to the other voice. He looked up, seeing the cleverly constructed tree house set in the middle of an oak tree, a shadow pacing within. “Finally, someone with enough sense to send Doctor Gloom over here away,” Roman shot at the boy, who merely mimicked him before leaning coolly against the trunk of the tree. “Greetings,” he called up the tree, to which the shadow paused – deliberating. “I was told that perhaps you could help me?”

The boy with shadows under his eyes nodded slightly, giving Roman slight encouragement before Roman narrowed his eyes at him – not forgetting the numerous slanders to his intelligence on the way here. 

The voice called down again, this time a bit clearer. “Who are you?” 

“My name’s Roman; I can assure you that I am dashing, handsome, and trustworthy.”

The voice answered far quicker this time, and Roman could tell that there was an amused twist behind the male voice as the boy above called his next question. “Roman what?”

“Just Roman.” 

There was a beat of silence, and then a piece of rope was thrown down from the door that had swung open a mere second before. “Good enough, I suppose.”

“I am not just ‘good enough’,” Roman pouted, grabbing at the rope and swinging himself up. “I am more than good enough. I am more than more than good enough. I am more-“

“Yes, yes, shut up,” the other boy groaned, from somewhere below Roman. “I do not appreciate the sight I’m getting right now.”

“Are you still here?” Roman shot back, to which the boy huffed something between a laugh and a groan. 

“He doesn’t go away much, unfortunately,” Roman’s mysterious helper said, as Roman reached the top of the rope and clambered – very gracefully – onto the landing. Shooting a look down to where the shadowy eyed boy mock saluted him in response, still leaning casually against the tree trunk, Roman stuck out his tongue and turned to look at his helper. His mouth fell open at the sight.

“Just Roman, yes?”

Sitting on his knees in front of him, bedraggled with twigs in his hair and dirt on his face, was Prince Thomas. Everyone knew about the boy prince, destined to rule a kingdom with a heart kinder, a sword stronger and a brain smarter than his father’s. But nobody knew that he had a treehouse out in the marshes, so far from any protection or knights or safety. 

As Roman’s mouth started to form words again, remembering who was in front of him and was looking at him with something of a wary look, his eyes fastened on the crown.

Thomas was still wearing it, despite the rags he’d clearly donned to go and adventure in. It was nothing truly spectacular – nothing that Roman himself had dreamed of when he’d daydreamed about being a prince himself. It was a silver circlet, almost – a band of metal that rested neatly on Thomas’ head despite the twigs sticking out from odd angles. There was only a simple carving; a swirling, ebbing design that spoke of sincerity rather than the brute power that was commonly associated with princes. 

Roman couldn’t think as he scrambled to remember how to function – dipping his head lower in something of a bow –

“Stop that,” the prince said, wincing as his hands shot out to dip underneath Roman’s chin – forbidding his head go any lower. “If you’re just Roman, then I get to be just Thomas.”

Roman swallowed. Twice. 

It was the boy who sniggered behind him that brought him back into reality. “Don’t you start,” Roman snapped at him – at the boy who had soundlessly climbed the rope and sat behind him without Roman even realizing. The boy shrugged and leant against the wall, his eyes now fixed on the ground that he’d left. 

“I was going to ask how you needed help,” Thomas said, a smile curving his lips. “But I think I can see how for myself.”

Roman pursed his lips, running a speculative eye down himself and his wrecked clothes, his bleeding wrist. “Trust me, I’m gorgeous under all of this dirt.”

“I think the dirt’s an improvement,” the boy muttered, to which Thomas shot him a patronizing glance. 

“Ignore him,” Thomas told Roman, gesturing him to enter the surprisingly spacious wooden building. Roman ducked under the door and went straight for the bucket in the corner, eyeing the clean water inside. “I put the bucket outside for when it rains and collect the rainwater,” Thomas briefly said, routing through a small box in the corner and pulling out a towel and – thank the lord – clean clothes. “Help yourself.”

“You come here often?” Roman asked, chucking his shirt off and dipping a small cloth into the bucket. Thomas turned around to look out of the window, the other boy curling into a corner. 

“Are you really trying a pick-up line?” The boy said, a smirk gracing his lips.

Thomas groaned, turning towards him. “Honestly, give the guy a break. He looks like he’s been dragged backwards through a hedge. Must you be rude?”

“I look like I’ve been given a lovely tour inside an incredibly well stocked dresser, I’ll have you know,” Roman quipped, trying not to shiver as he began to wash himself quickly with the cool cloth. 

“If by ‘incredibly well stocked dresser’, you mean a hedge, then yeah –“

“My point is, I’m glad that I now have other company than him,” Thomas said, cutting off the other boy. “As delightful as Anxiety is, he drives my head in sometimes.”

“Anxiety?” Roman repeated, enjoying the way that colour flushed Anxiety’s cheeks at the name.

“I’m not going to tell you my real name,” Anxiety drawled, drawing his knees up towards his chest. “If Thomas knew it, he’d probably banish me from the kingdom.”

“I would indeed,” Thomas agreed airily – although Roman saw right through that. The way that Thomas stood so entirely close to Anxiety without fear, or second-guessing, or a hint of hesitation – the boys were close. He wondered briefly if either of the two boys knew it. “The first time I ran away from the palace, he came and told me all the dreadful things that would happen if I stayed here – gave me nightmares for weeks, even when I went back to the palace.”

“That is what I do,” Anxiety shrugged. 

“Every time I want to explore more, he’ll stress me out so much that I must choose not to,” Thomas said, raising a blaming eyebrow. “If I had been king already, I might have thrown him into prison or something.” 

“Is it any wonder that I don’t share my name?”

“You want to explore?” Roman asked, pulling the towel and clean clothes towards him. “As in, the marshes?”

“Where else?” Thomas replied, his eyes glinting as he shot Roman a conspirator’s glance. Roman grinned back, his hands brushing down the clean fabric of his new clothes. “I think we’re going to get along, just Roman.”

“I do believe that you’re right, just Thomas.”

“Oh, no,” Anxiety groaned, watching as Thomas looped an arm through Roman’s. Roman shot him a wink, and his lip curled in disgust. “I’ve already said, the marshes are dangerous. Worse things are out there –“

“Worse things than you?” Roman shot, ignoring the way that Anxiety’s eyes flared, and the way that he bit his lip in anger. “I think you’re imagining things. There could be all sorts out there –“

“Like gold?” Thomas suggested.

“Like jewels!” Roman whooped, again eyeing the silver band on Thomas’ head. This time, instead of awe, it was jealousy tightening his throat. But he told himself that it wouldn’t matter that he didn’t truly have a crown – not when here, he could be the Prince. Princes were the ones to save people, were they not? So even if he only saved Thomas from boredom, at least that was in the essence of being a prince.

“Like monsters,” Anxiety suggested weakly, but Roman merely swaggered out of the tree house and slid down the rope with ease. “Hey – I’m serious, don’t go.” Roman saw the way that Thomas hesitated, the way that he glanced at Anxiety to ensure that he was indeed entirely serious. Power – Anxiety had power over Thomas, and from the nervousness of Anxiety’s movements as he followed them down the rope and toed the floor, he had no clue. 

But Roman tossed his head and laughed, the sound chasing all traces of silence away from their little bit of freedom. Thomas’ head shot towards him, and Roman winked at him. “Start living a little,” Roman said, gaiety ringing through his tone. He watched Anxiety stiffen out the corner of his eye – as the silver-tongued boy indeed realized that Roman could have power too. 

Thomas sent Roman a smile that Roman was fairly sure would stop plenty of admirers in their tracks. “Let’s have ourselves an adventure, Roman.”

Roman nodded and, as a second thought, reached behind and grabbed Anxiety’s tattered sleeve. The boy flinched – although seemed to calm down as he realized that Roman had not touched him directly, had only fastened on to the cloth. 

“An adventure,” Roman repeated, cocking his head towards the beckoning horizon of the marshes. “Come?” Anxiety’s eyes skittered from where Roman’s hand was gently but firmly held out towards him, the other held tight in Thomas’ arm. 

“I suppose someone has to keep you safe,” he said. Roman did not miss the sudden intake of breath as Thomas glanced back at Anxiety – as if he were replaying his words again and again in his head, wondering if they truly came about. Anxiety met Thomas’ eyes with a meek shrug, and Roman suddenly felt the urge to make that lost look stop.

“You know that I’d be the one rescuing you,” Roman mocked, swaggering into the endless world of opportunities, drawing the boys’ eyes towards him.

“I can see Anxiety willingly going into your arms,” Thomas mused, before Anxiety lightly hit him on the shoulder. 

As Thomas and Anxiety started squabbling, falling into a pattern that made Roman feel as though it were familiar to both, Roman suddenly came to three realizations.

One – all throughout his life, he’d dreamed big. He’d dreamed of exploits, adventures, witches. And yet he’d never felt happier than he was right now – with these people, aimlessly walking into a dirty terrain.

Two – he’d found somewhere where he belonged.

Three – Where he truly belonged was not at a castle. It was in between these two people, linked by his arms, walking to nowhere in particular and arguing about everything.


	3. 6 Years, 7 Months and 23 Days until Burning

“Slide, I told you to slide, why didn’t you slide?!”

“It’s hard when you are YELLING AT ME!” 

“WELL WHO’S YELLING NOW?”

Roman barely noticed it when Anxiety slammed his foot down on the courtyard steps, his growl following the sharp sound as it echoed throughout the wide, empty space. Perhaps he’d spent too much time around him – spent too much time becoming accustomed towards his habits of dramatically stomping his foot whenever Thomas and Roman’s arguments got too much for him.

“For your information,” Anxiety muttered, “both of you are yelling and it is utterly needless.”

“You’re utterly needless,” Roman mimicked back, to which Anxiety merely pulled his lips back in an unspoken retort. Perhaps it was the heat of the sword exercise he’d been trying to teach to Thomas, but Roman still felt the flush creep up the back of his neck as he watched Anxiety slump back, enjoying the shadows cast by the tall, tall walls. 

“I don’t understand why I need to do this,” Thomas panted, leaning his head dramatically towards the darkening sky. They’d spent most of the afternoon in the castle’s courtyard – much to Anxiety’s chagrin – practicing after Roman had proclaimed he’d had a dream where he’d need to fight with skill unparalleled in the battlefield.

“You are a Prince,” Roman promptly supplied, wielding his sword for dramatic effect. “Princes simply must know how to fight – how else are you going to beat dragon witches?”

“Why on earth would Thomas need to fight your mother?”

Roman shot a look promising a slow death towards Anxiety at that little quip, although he knew he shouldn’t – not when the boy looked faintly delighted at getting any irritated reaction. “Let’s try again,” Roman said, trying to keep the twinkle out of his eyes. 

“I can feel my lungs trying to kill me,” Thomas wheezed, staggering towards where Anxiety was leaning against a shaded part of the wall. Anxiety opened one eye, watching the prince stand next to him with barely hidden glee at the fact that Roman had been left standing alone in a fighting position. “Anxiety, you got this – go for it. You should learn how to fight too.”

Roman grinned as Anxiety was suddenly lumbered with the wooden sword, courtesy of Thomas practically throwing it into his arms. “Why would I need to fight Roman’s mother? I don’t need a sword.”

“Swords are a flashier way of fighting,” Roman insisted, beckoning to Anxiety with a coy smile. “And it makes you look cute.”

“Cute?” Anxiety repeated, drily. 

“I meant acute – as in, narrow and shallow. Pay attention.” Roman forbade himself from flirting again – not when it seemed to only make him more embarrassed than the cool passivity of Anxiety. He was used to flirting – and used to the way that any person he tried it on swooned and blushed. But with Anxiety? Nothing so much as a reaction.   
It made Roman want to stab something.

“Here I go!” He cried, swiping in for the left. Anxiety did not even move as Roman dove in low with his wooden sword, did not even flinch as he used the rolling motion to swipe at his legs. “Anxiety, that is your legs cut and done for. You’re basically dead.”

“There are easier ways to get me on my knees,” the boy muttered, to which Roman faltered in his steps, wondering if he heard it right. Anxiety did not say anything more – perhaps not entirely realizing that Roman had heard. 

“Can you not die, please, Anxiety?” Thomas called from the shade. Roman did not have to look to know that the prince had long since laid down on the floor. 

“That’s a hefty request, Thomas. What do I get in return?”

“My company,” Roman supplied, smiling what he hoped was a dazzling smile. Anxiety merely squinted at him, as if somehow Roman were something bright. He opened his mouth, and Roman couldn’t help but lean in – not entirely sure what he wanted, but certain that he wanted to hear his next few words.

“I’ve never been more motivated to die from a wooden sword,” Anxiety said, looking at the make-shift weapon in his hand. “Go on, Roman. Cut my legs again. You know you want to.”

Roman’s patience ignited at the disappointment he felt at Anxiety’s response. “I do very much want to stab you,” Roman agreed, and slid himself to the left in the same move as before, hoping that perhaps he could leave a bruise. What he was not expecting was the sudden way Anxiety moved, twisting to Roman’s unprotected right and stabbing downwards in a move that Roman could appreciate – if he were a bystander instead of the one being stabbed.

But he was the one being stabbed, and it hurt.

A lot.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!?” He yelled, standing upright and hissing at the pain bursting across his ribcage on the right. The boy had stuck his sword along the unprotected strip of ribs just below the armpit – not entirely dignified a place for Roman to grab and howl about. But the sharp ache told Roman’s sense of dignity to go and do a very select action to itself – and so he yelled and twisted himself around to grasp the small area of skin. “That was hardly fair! I hadn’t even taught Thomas about stabbing!”

“Who needs teaching about how to stab someone?” Thomas offered a meek response, before doubling over laughing. Roman flushed as he realized that Thomas was laughing at him, and it was one of the most glorious sounds he’d heard. Then he turned towards Anxiety, who seemed to have focused on something beyond his shoulder.

Not something.

Someone.

“Just for once, can no one get stabbed?” 

Roman heaved an exasperated sigh that could probably be heard from within the castle itself. “If I could have avoided getting stabbed, I would have!” With that, he turned to look at the newcomer. 

The newcomer winked at Anxiety as they swung themselves around the open door with a surprising amount of energy considering the fact that the sun was setting. Anxiety – to Roman’s delight and eternal confusion – smiled back, holding up a hand in a greeting. Thomas, too, heaved his head upwards to smile at the newcomer before flopping down again. 

He was tall but had the almost gangly look of being delicate – his grey overcoat hanging around his shoulders as something of a discount cloak. The rest of his clothes perhaps suggested a lower working station within the castle – but Roman could hardly care about that when the guy’s smile was brighter than the sun currently sinking below the horizon. 

The guy skipped over to where Roman was still hunched over, bemoaning the state of his wounded ribs – and pride. “Are you alright?” 

Roman fought off the flush that threatened to bloom across his cheekbones at Anxiety scoffing at the question. “I am just fine, you really don’t have to worry.”

“Well, if you’re alright then I suppose I do have to worry – since I am pretty sure that you should be at least half left.”

Roman was surprised enough to laugh loudly, startling Anxiety into rolling his eyes. “Instead of Roman, I might stab Patton after that,” Anxiety muttered to Thomas, to which the prince waved a hand and muttered something about the law not allowing animal abuse.

“Patton?” Roman repeated, scanning the newcomer from head to toe and back again. He stood straighter, despite the pain dusting over his ribs.

“That’s me,” the boy said, grinning and winking roguishly at him. “And I’ve heard enough from Xi to know that you’re Roman.”

“I’ve told you not to use a nickname for a nickname that Thomas gave me,” Anxiety said, rolling his eyes and frowning. Roman smiled a wicked smile, to which Anxiety – Xi – glowered at. 

“You know what would be funny?” Thomas said, his voice sounding oddly twisted as he merely spoke up to the sky from his lying down position. “If Roman gave you a nickname for the nickname that Patton gave you for the nickname that I gave you-“

“And you know what would be funnier?” Roman said, meeting Thomas’ eyes with a grin of amusement. “If you gave him a nickname for the nickname that I’d give him for-“

“I will stab you both,” Anxiety said, but the threat went empty as Patton waltzed over to him and slung an arm around his shoulder. Roman blinked – Anxiety didn’t like touch, yet here this boy was, a full arm around his slumped shoulders, and Anxiety hadn’t even flinched. Roman shook himself, then – what should it matter to him if Anxiety was being touched and felt at ease with another person?

“Now, Anxiety,” Patton said, his tone creeping more towards the paternal tone. Anxiety, apparently, knew what was coming and ducked easily out from under his arm, stalking over to Thomas and lying down next to him. “Don’t walk away – I just think that we don’t need to stab people who are friends. Or anyone, really.” 

“Don’t stab anyone?” Roman repeated, incredulous. “What about enemies?”

“Yeah – what about when Roman really annoys me?” Anxiety echoed, raising his hand in a mock student fashion.

“Fight me,” Roman shot back.

“That did not turn out well for you last time,” Anxiety replied, his eyes dropping down to where pain was indeed hovering – as if he could sense where, exactly, the pain was. 

“If it helps, Roman, you beat me,” Thomas offered, heaving himself into a sitting position with monumental effort. “And I’m a prince.”

“I thought you were just Thomas,” Roman teased, giving up his stance and stalking over to where Anxiety was still lying and Thomas was now lounging. Patton followed without any hesitation – and Roman did not feel the slightest flicker of fear that he’d come to expect when around strangers. 

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “What a pompous tone for someone who just lost to Anxiety.”

“You say like that like winning against me is easy,” Anxiety muttered, poking Thomas in the side. Roman looked down his nose at him, stepping deliberately over him to sit next to his head. 

“Most days, you’re nice enough to not want to stab people,” Patton said, although Roman had the feeling that he was trying to convince himself.

“Why was today different?” Roman asked, his tone creeping on the defensive.

Anxiety smirked at him before catching himself and sinking back into the picture of nonchalance that Roman was used to. “Today was different because it was you who was stupid enough to want to fight me, and I couldn’t resist stabbing you.”

“Ah, not many can resist Prince Roman,” Roman cried, holding a hand to his chest. “It is a hard feat, let me tell you, to resist his charms and good character.”

“I thought you were just Roman,” Thomas snipped, winking at Roman with the ire of someone not entirely thrilled that Roman’s feet were now dangerously close to touching him. 

“I’m just Patton, if that helps anyone,” Patton said, perching on the actual bench next to Thomas. 

“How come I haven’t seen you around here before, sunshine?” Roman asked, smirking at the way that Anxiety seemed to glower for a moment – and then relaxed back into his normal, brooding self as though he understood Patton was indeed the literal definition of sunshine.

“It’s because you’re exceptionally dense and don’t keep your eyes open,” Anxiety supplied, to which Patton shot him a disapproving look. 

“It’s probably because I’ve been working – I’m only a servant here, tending to guests, and neither you nor Thomas really get the opportunity to visit me.” It was true – since the encounter months ago, Roman’s life had been turned upside down. Thomas and himself had dragged Anxiety on many adventures – exploring around, inside and outside the castle, much to Anxiety’s immortal chagrin. 

“But Anxiety knows you,” Roman said, accusingly shooting Anxiety a glance. “Is it because he’s plotting against the crown, using you to get to know the inner workings of the castle?”

“I’m not always the bad guy,” Anxiety muttered, and Roman felt a flash of regret – it was the way Anxiety fidgeted slightly further away from Thomas that told him immediately that his words had hit something deep, without him even meaning or trying to. 

“Of course you’re not,” Patton readily said, the lack of hesitation again surprising Roman. “He comes to visit me sometimes, to talk and just hang out when he has nowhere to go. He has a habit of noticing the small things,” he finished, shooting the said boy a friendly wink. Anxiety sent him half a smile in return, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction – but enough to tell Roman that he was more at ease with Patton than what he’d first thought. 

“How come he noticed Roman then, with his huge ego?”

Thomas had barely finished his sentence when Anxiety let out a laugh – a surprisingly loud sound, before he strangled it. “You know what they say – a huge ego must be compensating for a small –“

“Foot.”

“What?” Anxiety closed his eyes in confusion, leaving Roman and Thomas to squint at Patton’s interruption.

Patton, apparently, did not appreciate being doubted. “Foot! Isn’t that the saying? A huge ego makes up for having a small foot?”

“What sayings have you been hearing?” Roman inquired, unable to stop the twist of his lips as they formed a smile. “And where have you been hearing them?” Patton opened his mouth for a beat, but then he just looked confused and shrugged instead. “And, for the record,” Roman went on, jostling his posture to look more confident, “my shoe size is not small.” 

Anxiety, much to Roman’s delight, blushed.

Thomas, on the other hand, made a faint sound of disgust and heaved himself to his feet, using Patton’s knee as an anchor. “Well the sun’s gone down, I’ve got to get back in to visit my father.” Roman didn’t miss the way that Thomas’ face tightened. He stood up too, brushing Thomas’ elbow with his own. Idle touch between them always seemed to steady them, always seemed to bring them towards the same thought process. If Roman was the ‘ego’ – which he was a loath to admit – then Thomas was his modesty. 

Patton smiled sadly, standing too. “It’ll be okay,” he encouraged, lightly taking Thomas’ other elbow and steering him lightly to the door. 

They all knew that the king was not going to be okay, but Roman could tell that Thomas appreciated the words all the same – because Patton had not said that the king would be okay. He had said that the situation, one day, would be. And it was that kind of quiet optimism that won Roman’s allegiance for him, right there and then.

Roman ducked inside first – he had a small room on the ground floor, near the barracks. Thomas – upon realizing that he hadn’t had a home in those first couple of days of knowing him – had set him up with a bed and a roof over his head. It wasn’t exactly a king-sized bed, or a lavish suite; but the small comfort allowed Roman to nurture his dreams of one day, living as he wished. 

He waited for Patton and Thomas to enter after him, and then made to shut the door. But the image that was left on the other side of the door, the outside, haunted him.

Because Anxiety was just standing there, in the middle of the dark courtyard, alone in the night. 

But he did not seem alone; if anything, he seemed to come alive in the darkness, where shafts of moonlight flickered and danced around him, and the night air lifted his hair in a tender caress. His eyes were shut, face lifted up – and Roman was struck with the knowledge of how pale Anxiety was. He glowed with the moonlight, with an echo of something supernatural. But unlike in the sun, where he looked sallow and unhealthy, he now seemed to radiate light and health.

And beauty.

“He’ll change the world, someday.”

Roman spun, his heart beating a thunderous melody as he realized Patton had seen him watching Anxiety and… admiring. But his heart – had it always been beating that fast? – slowed as he realized Patton was watching him too, that ethereal boy that they’d left alone in the courtyard. Patton gave him a knowing look as he turned back towards the door that Thomas had gone through, his thoughts probably on his father. “He will change the world,” Roman murmured. “But will it be for the good – or the bad?”

Patton halted, and then carried on without looking back. “I suppose that part is up to us and how we treat him. Goodnight Roman – I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Roman nodded – tomorrow, he’d seek Patton out. Whether to play or to go on another adventure, he liked the smile that Patton had brought. But for now…

“Goodnight,” he murmured towards the boy, still gazing towards the stars with his eyes closed, and shut the door.


	4. 1 Year, 1 Month and 14 Days until Burning

When one wakes up to Patton bouncing on their bed energetically, darkness still reigning and the moon still high in the sky, Roman felt that one was perfectly justified in just knowing that the day was going to be a horrible one – and kicked him right off. He ignored the scramble and yelp of the fall, turning over in his too-cold covers and pinched his eyes shut. 

“If I ignore you, will you go away?” Roman muttered – or at least, tried to. All he could make out from his own voice was a nonsensical groan, deepened by the thick lure of sleep. Patton laughed, although whether or not he truly understood was up for debate. Perhaps he was merely laughing at the state of Roman’s hair when he hadn’t had the time to brush it. 

“Roman, you’ve got to get up!” Patton whispered, which Roman thought as pretty useless after he had literally acted as though his own bed was his personal trampoline. “It’s Thomas’ coronation day!”

“Isn’t that just cute-“ Roman said, pulling a pillow over his head. He still refused to open his eyes – opening his eyes would make him definitely accept the fact that he was awake. And he was not prepared for that commitment right now. 

He heard Patton hold his breath for a startled moment, before he felt a warmth hovering over his shoulder. “Hey, Roman.” Roman groaned. “Hey, Roman.” This time, Roman tried to opt for the hum. If he could only have mastered the noble art of dropping off to sleep whenever he so wished –

“Roman,” Patton sang, drawing out the two syllables of his name in a mock lullaby. “I made you cake!”

One moment, Roman had been clenching a pillow to his head, trying to block the guy out. The next, he was sitting bolt upright, gazing wide-eyed at Patton, the blankness in his head meaning that he wasn’t quite sure how he got into that position. But at least he knew why. “Cake?”

Patton got up from his untidy heap on the floor, placing his hands over his hips. “You got up for cake, but not for Thomas’ coronation?” Roman stared at him for a moment, and then slid his gaze to the white, sparkling new clothes that were hanging neatly on the side of his narrow cot. 

“It’s Thomas’ coronation day.” Roman repeated. Patton raised an eyebrow. “It’s – oh my god, Patton! It’s Thomas’ coronation day!” He couldn’t help the shaking in his hands as he reached out to grab Patton’s – this day had taken so long to get here! Thomas was going to be crowned today – Roman had been equally dreading and looking forward to it for weeks, for months, for years. He couldn’t wait to see that crown, see it placed on his best friend’s head and just know everything would be alright. He’d been preparing himself for the punch to the gut for as long as he’d figured out how much Thomas meant to him, though. Seeing the crown go on Thomas’ head, rather than his own. 

Jealousy would not play a part in today, Roman decided, right there and then. Celebration, though – jubilation, a festivity. Thomas – his Thomas, being made King. 

“Right,” Roman said, leaving the lingering warmth of his bed with little care, unable to keep the grin from his face. “First, I must get dressed –“ He trailed off, glancing out of the window. It hadn’t been his imagination – it was dark. He looked back at Patton, who’s grin began to trail off as he realized that perhaps he’d made a mistake. “Patton,” Roman started, trying and failing to keep his voice from taking on a threatening note. “Please tell me that you have not gotten me out of a warm bed at a ridiculous time in the morning.” 

Patton bit his lip, and Roman’s eyes – as tired as they were – did not miss the fact that he’d begun to inch his way towards the door. “That’s fine,” Patton smiled, so widely that Roman’s anger took a trip. “I’ll just not tell you.” 

Grabbing his sword and his blanket, Roman wrapped the blanket around himself like a cloak, tying it hastily into a knot on his shoulder. He then shot Patton a simpering smile and wielded the sword, deliberate and slow, in his direction. Patton did not hesitate to turn and run – but Roman did not either in running after him. Despite all of Roman’s exercises, running around with the guards and learning fitness, he began to lose his breath chasing after the nimble annoyance – the entire scenario made a lot worse as he realized that the annoyance was laughing as he ran. 

Patton led him through a matrix of corridors and stairwells, his knowledge of the castle and its many routes far superior to that of Roman’s. Whilst Roman had a budding knowledge of which corridors were less used by the guards – knowledge left over from all of the times that he, Thomas and Anxiety had snuck out – he was utterly lost within minutes and only hoped that when he caught up to Patton, he could tackle him and threaten to draw a moustache on him until Patton gave him the correct directions back. 

But his plan was wrecked as he found Patton coming to a halt outside of a room that Roman knew as well as he knew his own. He shot a look behind him, bemused. How had Patton made him so utterly lost that he hadn’t realized he was on his way to Thomas’ room until he actually got there? Patton shrugged, doubling over as he panted with a rhythm that made Roman’s own heartrate start to speed up. Roman rolled his eyes, his own stamina recovered. “We can’t all be obsessed with physical nonsense,” Patton grumbled, wiping his brow. “Some of us prefer the indoors.” 

“Why like the indoors when the outdoors is so much better?” Roman said, a bemused smile rising to the surface.

“The indoors has books, and food, and beds,” Patton suggested. “The outdoors has mud, and muck, and mush.” 

“Your literacy astounds me,” Roman told him wryly. “Perhaps if you like books so much, you could actually learn their language.” 

Patton grimaced. “I prefer the ones with pictures, anyway.” Before Roman could retort to that, Patton put his hand on Thomas’ door and quietly opened it. Roman gave a quick nod to the utterly confused guards on duty – they knew him well enough not to question him going into Thomas’ bedroom at random times, and everyone in this castle knew and loved Patton. He then followed Patton’s lead and poked his head around the narrow opening of the door.

Thomas’ bed was empty. 

Roman found that he wasn’t surprised about it, looking at the horrid purple of the bedsheets all rumpled and messy. He wasn’t surprised about the fact that Thomas’ double doors made of glass were left open, a shadowy figure standing alone on the balcony. 

Patton glanced at Roman before creeping in, and Roman followed suit. He understood Patton’s hesitancy – did Thomas need to be alone more than he needed company? But that was what they were there for. They were there so that if Thomas decided that he was about to break, he could choose between fixing himself, or asking them for help.

There was no shame in either – not for them. 

So Roman grabbed Patton’s hand and led him away from the figure on the balcony. Thomas could stay out there, overlooking the kingdom he was about to inherit, and be alone with his thoughts. He tugged Patton towards the bed, dropping his hand just as he reached for a pillow. Patton went to the other side, matching Roman’s movements as they did their best to straighten up the bed so that it managed to look relatively close to acceptable – but as Patton stepped back to admire their handiwork, Roman gave him a grin and dropped his sword onto the floor and sprawled himself over the left side of the bed, earning himself a sigh in the process. He curled himself further into the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and settled, lying obnoxiously on his back so that he was looking up towards the ceiling. 

So, he could see it as Patton gave his non-existent audience a ‘what-can-you-do’ shrug and crawled lightly to the foot of the bed, where Roman passed him a cushion. Both of them stayed silent, comfy in the lack of talking.

Thomas joined them – whether a mere minute or hour later, Roman couldn’t tell. He said nothing, only settled himself in the space left and curled onto his side. But Roman felt it when Thomas’ bare fingertips whispered against the exposed skin of his wrist. 

They were stone cold.

“I’m afraid.” Thomas whispered. “I’m so very afraid.” 

Roman felt Patton lift his torso, saw his eyes open bright. “Why are you afraid?” 

Thomas said nothing for a while.

Then – “I’m scared because I’m about to get control of a place that I love so very much – what if I ruin it all? I’m about to become the figurehead of this entire kingdom; everything anyone does reflects on me. And what if I can’t handle it, what if it gets too much, what if everything falls apart and I’m left with nothing but the crumbling kingdom, trickling like sand between my fingers?” 

“I’m afraid because I cannot do as I did when I was younger – I can’t continually hope for an escape, plot an adventure in a forgotten marsh. I can’t have that freedom now – does that make me a bad person, destined to be a bad King? What kind of King hates being trapped within his own kingdom?” 

“And I’m so afraid,” Thomas said, still whispering, “because my people think I’m going to be smart, and kind, and strong – all at once. But I’m not smart – I lose every game of scrabble that I play. I’m not kind – I’ve been well fed all of my life, didn’t even give a second thought to those that haven’t had regular meals until Roman came to me. And strong – god,” Thomas’ voice broke. “Strong – my father is – was – strong. He was everything that the word suggests – and me? I can’t beat a single person in sword fighting. I can’t run for miles, I can’t keep to my decisions if I even for a second doubt them. There are people wondering what kind of King that I’ll be – and I am so afraid to tell them about how stupid, nasty and weak I am.” 

Roman’s throat was dry as he swallowed, forbidding his eyes to let the tears that had collected there loose. He allowed the silence after Thomas’ confession take over, gazing around the room until he saw who he was looking for.

Anxiety was huddled in the corner – so curled up within himself that Roman wasn’t surprised that neither he nor Patton had seen him as they’d snuck in. He’d likely been there for hours – doused in his own fear. Roman could not explain why Thomas and Anxiety felt each other’s fear so deeply – but he understood what he had to do. 

He again left the comfort of a warm bed and padded over the cold stone floor to where Anxiety was shaking – on the floor, not even registering the existence of his own bed a few meters away. Anxiety and Thomas had shared a room for years – Roman couldn’t name a time where he knew any differently. But he shook that thought off and slowly, slowly raised a hand to touch Anxiety’s arm, but the moment that he made contact, Anxiety flinched away so violently that he hit his head on the wall behind him and cried out. “Hey,” Roman breathed, “hey, hey.” Anxiety looked at him, and it was all Roman could do not to cower from the world’s worth of hate pouring through his eyes. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Roman breathed, taking his hand away so that Anxiety could see that there was no threat to be afraid of. “I’m afraid, too.” 

Anxiety’s eyes cleared, and it was like the moon being revealed by a passing cloud. His lips thinned in slight embarrassment, but Roman began taking backward little steps away – until Anxiety knew what he wanted him to do. He stood up, his back hunched from the amount of time spent curled on a cold floor and followed him back to the bed. 

“I’m afraid, too,” Roman said as he slipped back into his side, patting the sheets next to him. Anxiety held his gaze as he climbed in, lying so that he was between Patton and Roman – a mere touch away from Thomas’ shin. 

Patton breathed a laugh, but there was nothing mocking in his gaze as he smiled at Roman. Anxiety levelled a look at Roman. “I didn’t think you were ever afraid, Princey.” His voice sounded awful – as if he had been screaming. 

“I’m afraid of a great many things,” Roman said, sitting up. Patton perked up, his lips spreading into an excited smile as Roman cleared his throat. “I am afraid of being brave, mostly. Someone once told me to be brave was to be stupid, and I haven’t managed to get it out of my head since.” 

Thomas’ mouth quivered – he was still far too close to the brink of tears, far too close than Roman wanted him to be. “I think you’ll be a wonderful King,” Patton said, softly. “Not only because you are one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, but because you think so badly of yourself. You take what little weaknesses you have and exaggerate them to such an extent that you would never bow to them – you’d never let them become you. And I think that – as well as a million other things – is the reason why you’ll be a wonderful King.”

“You could have sent me away,” Roman said, after it was clear Thomas wouldn’t – or couldn’t – say anything. “That day, when we first met. You could easily have said no – but you did not. You let me in, helped me clean myself, gave me clothes without a second thought as to whether or not you’d get them back. You were kind enough to welcome me, smart enough to be able to get water to give me, and strong enough to refuse me bowing my head and calling you ‘Your Highness’.”

Thomas let out a noise that perhaps could have been a laugh. “You two – I am so glad that I met you, Roman. I’m eternally glad that you won me over with an ego that bowed to no one. And Patton – how could I have not noticed you, with your kindness?” Roman leaned back into the cushions and lightly touched Patton with the tip of his shoe meaningfully, although he remained curled on his side, facing away from him. If Roman squinted in the darkness, he could just make out the light blue of his shirt rising and falling at his shoulders just a tad too fast to be casual. 

Thomas’ breaths evened out, his fingertips still resting lightly on Roman’s wrist. Roman watched as the prince drifted off to a well-deserved sleep, his mouth slightly ajar as he breathed heavily. Patton, too – he gave a little sigh as he finally turned onto his back, quiet snores making themselves known. 

“He’ll change the world,” Roman breathed to the ceiling, the words escaping from the cage in his chest. 

“Yes,” Anxiety agreed, nearly causing Roman to have a heart attack. Thomas murmured in his sleep as Roman’s wrist was suddenly jerked away from underneath his fingertips, but he didn’t wake – and so Roman heaved himself into a sitting position to glare at Anxiety. “What? I’m not allowed to agree?”

“I feel suspicious when you agree with me,” Roman said, squinting his eyes at Anxiety to make a point. The man sighed, sidling just a few inches closer. 

“You are right, in this one instance,” Anxiety amended. “Thomas was born to change the world. He’ll make a good king.” 

“Just good?” Roman repeated, raising his eyebrows. 

“Better than good,” Anxiety smiled. Roman almost forgot how to breathe. “Be patient with him – he’ll get there.” Roman began wriggling slightly, accidentally brushing his knee against Anxiety’s shoulder. 

“What about you?” Roman yawned, settling down yet again. “When will you get there?”

“Get where?”

“Closer to telling us your name – to admitting what about you is so mysterious.” 

“Mysterious? Me?” Anxiety’s voice dripped in a mock-hurt fashion. “I don’t know. I’ve always just felt that if I can’t make life enjoyable under a cursed name, what good is a nice life with a real one?”

“So - you’re making it purposely hard for yourself?” Roman summarised. He practically felt Anxiety glare at him.

“I suppose.”

“What are you punishing yourself for?” Roman wondered, but it wasn’t until Anxiety stiffened that he realized he’d said it aloud. He wasn’t stupid enough to wait for an answer – not tonight. Not when Anxiety’s silence was answer enough, for now.

As Roman fell further into sleep, he could have sworn Anxiety whispered something – but the black whispers of the night swept it away, unheard. And so Roman faded into sleep, forgetting as he fell.


	5. 1 Year, 1 Month and 13 Days until Burning

“Your Highness?” 

Roman grunted in response – sure, it wasn’t how he was normally awoken, but who was he to refuse someone calling him ‘your highness’? 

“Your Highness, you must get up soon.” 

“If I’m the prince, I can get up when I say,” Roman attempted to say, although his voice was surely muffled by sleep – and a pillow? The confusion was enough to bring him to his senses, and he sluggishly got his arms underneath his chest and heaved his torso up. He blinked at the odd purple of the blankets surrounding him – they were far superior to the mere cotton blanket that he called his own. 

“If only that were the way that the world worked,” Thomas murmured, Roman’s movement having woken him up. Roman blinked at him, too – but started to smile as Thomas deliberately blinked back at him. “I’m awake,” he called to the guard outside, who Roman heard turn on his heel and lightly run away to report to his higher command. 

“Hello awake, I’m Patton,” something murmured down by the foot of the bed. Thomas yelped as he realized that his feet were mere inches away from the mop of untidy brown hair that unmistakably belonged to Patton. “Whatever time it is, I am sure it’s too early.” 

“You call this early, but not the time at which you woke me up?” Roman asked, rubbing his eyes. A chill raced over his skin, and he squinted at the open balcony doors – to where the sun was already making the world a far brighter place than what his eyes were happy with. “Thomas, you left the door open.”

“I can do what I want,” Thomas grunted, before heaving a pillow over his head and sinking back into his bed. Roman mimicked him for a moment, but then stopped as he listened to the world outside, seeping in from the balcony. The distant music was playing, and if he really concentrated, he could hear the faint sounds of people laughing and yelling in the streets. 

“Not today, you can’t,” Roman told his friend, poking him in the side. Thomas grumbled, but didn’t respond. “Come on, strong one. You’ve got to look pretty.” 

“I always look pretty,” Thomas protested, but Patton made a noise of faint disagreement and kicked him sharply – making him roll straight onto the cool stone floor. If Roman had not already been awake, he would have after the sharp scream that Thomas made as he hit the floor with an impressive thud. The prince bounded to his feet and glared at the innocent eyes of Patton and the wheezing Roman, silently daring them to remember the sound he’d just made. 

Roman said nothing, Patton following suit – both of them valuing their lives over their amusement. But a sly cackle danced in from outside, where a shadowed figure peered around the open door to run a dark eye over them all. “Very kingly,” Anxiety told Thomas, who scowled. “I’m impressed.”

“And under-dressed,” Roman noted, seeing the long night shirt Anxiety had donned at some point sway slightly in the early morning breeze. Anxiety sent a lovely gesture his way, making Patton tut loudly before he turned to go back outside.

“Granted, it was not the most graceful I’ve ever been,” Thomas muttered, sauntering over to his separate closet. “Behave while I get dressed,” he said to Roman, before turning slightly to Patton. “Make sure he behaves.” 

“I am the most well behaved here!” Roman complained, but Thomas had already shut the door with a sharp snap. Patton laughed as he jumped to his feet, blankets falling from his body to the floor. “Thank you for getting me up at that stupid time,” Roman murmured, and Patton blinked – before grinning widely.

“I thought you were going to stab me if you caught up to me,” he confessed, crossing the large room to where he’d folded his cloak the night before. 

“I was thinking of doing worse than that,” Roman told him, padding across the room himself to see the sights of the kingdom for himself. “I was going to draw a moustache on you.” He heard Patton’s sound of mocking disgust as the male called out a farewell and left, shutting the door briskly behind him. They all knew how Patton had his job in the castle too – and there would be a great deal of feasting today; Patton would be rather busy in the kitchens, in the guest wing of the castle, accommodating for all of the guests who were going to present at the huge ceremony taking place at midday. “I’ve got to go and get dressed myself,” Roman said, popping his head around the open doors, catching the sight of Anxiety leaning over the balcony ledges and watching the happenings of a festival being to take place.

“Look at them and all of their festivities,” Anxiety said, his voice both awed and trembling. “Fear is not something that can be banished with mere words, Roman. What you said to Thomas last night helped, but whatever is eating at him… It’ll keep coming back.”

Roman shrugged as he saw the bonfire in the courtyard being stacked high, nearly reaching the surrounding parapets already. “Fear keeps people alive – I’d hate for Thomas to die a stupid death simply because he had no fear. Anyway, we need to have problems here, otherwise everything will get boring.”

Anxiety gave him a look that told Roman he was being an idiot – much to his chagrin. “Boring is safe.”

“Boring is boring,” Roman insisted, lightly pushing away from the ledge and lightly jogging back to the door. He gathered his sword and dropped blanket, draping around his bare chest with little modesty – he wouldn’t want to scare a visiting royal with his brazenness. “I’ll see you later!” He called, hearing a crash and a loud shout from the closet that indicated he had better leave quickly. He left Anxiety, rolling his eyes and sullenly shuffling towards the closet, to deal with whatever mess he’d just made and ran towards clean clothes and then the coronation.

*

Hours later, Roman was fidgeting in his clean white suit with smug satisfaction. The largest hall in the castle was gorgeous – Patton’s team of staff had truly outdone themselves.

The purple and gold of the empire was strung around everywhere – huge banners that hung above, the gold embroidery glistening in the daylight. The windows had been thrown open, welcoming in any breeze that had managed to make it through the summer day. Pews were steadily but surely being filled, the chatter of people rising above any sounds of festivities in the courtyard and the kingdom beyond – which was impressive. Roman had stolen Patton away for a bit and had gone into the kingdom earlier to see the sights of dances, markets and artists going wild in the streets, and both of them had very nearly stayed. 

But then he’d had to lead Patton away from the giant cheese he’d been eyeing with a sly air back to the castle so that they’d be allowed into the great hall for midday. 

He hadn’t seen Thomas since that morning – the Prince (Roman noted how this was one of the last times he’d have to call him that) had been busy greeting every noble, royal and trade vizier that had come through his huge doors, coming to enjoy the crowning of the secure sovereign. Roman could understand the feeling of anxiety cutting through the air – there were alliances to be made here, later, when Thomas was confident in his throne. 

Roman was standing near the front, right next to the little door that the last of the servants had ducked through just mere moments before the crowd had begun to be ushered in. The armoured guards had left him alone – one or two perhaps spying the fact that the door had been cracked open just the right amount for Patton to see what was going on. Roman trusted the guards, though – they were kind enough to not begrudge neither him nor Patton the chance to see their friend crowned.

He allowed his eyes to sweep back and forth along the crowd, admiring the variation of colour that people had dressed in. There was a spectacular red dress, worn by an equally spectacular girl – as well as a male dressed in a shade of green that on anyone else, would have been repulsive. The dark tones of his skin and the charming quirk of the man’s smile, though, meant that it only worked in his favour. 

Roman almost caught his eye the moment that Patton yelped and ruined the connection that he and that dashing fellow might have had, however. 

“Patton?” Roman hissed, trying to make it seem as though he were not talking to himself. He and Patton had been exchanging a few words as he’d hid, the former barely moving his lips, trying not to draw any more attention to himself than necessary. The guards might like Patton, but the guests would not appreciate his presence. “Are you dead?”

“No, but I’m dad!”

“You’re not even a father!” An unmistakable hiss cut across Patton, allowing Roman to take a breath and relax. “Why do you even call yourself a dad?”

“I’m always the one looking out for you,” Patton protested, but then his voice got muffled – and Roman was willing to bet that it was because Anxiety had suddenly shoved his hand into Patton’s face. 

“So, what’s happening?” Anxiety asked, and Roman could appreciate that whilst his voice was literally the embodiment of a spring coiled up far too tight, he was trying to sound upbeat. 

“Well between you and Patton, you’ve dashed my chances with someone of immense beauty,” Roman said, only half-joking. There was no way that a royal that beautiful would ever notice him – a man of no social standing, barely a soldier for the sheer amount of time he spent at Thomas’ side rather than in the army. Sure, he trained with the guards and helped them with their shifts – but what was he? 

Roman shoved that internal crisis aside – as he always did. 

“As if you had a chance anyway,” Anxiety’s mocking voice came from behind the door, voicing Roman’s own thoughts. 

“Now, Anxiety,” Patton chided. “Roman is handsome – he can find his soulmate anywhere he pleases.”

Roman could almost hear Anxiety’s smirk in his voice. “I don’t think that’s how soulmates work.”

“Shut up,” Patton said mildly.

Roman held back a laugh, noticing someone’s stare. A dark-eyed stranger sat in one of the front pews, utterly unaccompanied and looking perfectly at ease whilst being so. Roman remained impassive, ignoring Anxiety and Patton’s quiet bickering behind him – why was he staring at him? 

The male’s clothes were fine enough to mark him as someone important – but the dark, subtle blue would never be worn by any self-respecting royal. Royals were born for attention – apart from Thomas, who seemed as willing to shy away from attention as he was stepping into it – and so a subtle prince? No such thing.

The man coolly raised an eyebrow when he noticed Roman’s attention and slid his gaze towards someone else. Roman followed his stare and marked a remaining servant, nervously hanging by the buffet of drinks. Roman frowned, flicking his gaze back to the handsome man. Cool intelligence flickered behind the thin glasses that he wore, and his back was straight. He bore no mark of house on his clothes, no hints as to his allegiance. 

“What’s going on?” Patton’s voice suddenly rose above Roman’s concentration. “You’ve gone quiet.”

“There’s just this man staring at me,” Roman said, keeping his eyes firmly on the stranger despite the fact that his brown eyes had long since settled on what Roman suspected was a book hidden underneath the pews. 

“How rude of him – has he never seen a monkey before?” 

Roman was spared from answering Anxiety’s slight as Patton lightly pushed the door wider – enough to poke his head out. Before Roman could hiss a warning, Patton’s eyes scanned the crowd with glowing excitement. Patton’s eyes settled on the stranger – which wasn’t surprising, seeing as he was the only one dressed so darkly. “Logan!” 

“Logan?” Roman repeated. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn that he saw Patton blush lightly. “He’s one of the guests staying in my quarters – he’s asked me for help carting books to and from his room to the library. He’s nice company, although…”

“Although?” Prompted Anxiety. 

“I don’t think Roman would get along with him,” Patton hedged, and Roman shot him a questioning glance. “You are both very passionate about very different things, that’s all.”

“Why should it matter, anyway?” Roman sighed, running his eyes again up and down the so-called Logan. “He’s leaving after the coronation and we’ll never have to battle our passions.” 

Patton seemed as though he were about to say something – but then fell silent as Logan stood abruptly from his pew. The sudden movement startled Roman for a mere second – the other guests not caring – but then he instinctively began moving. Not towards Logan – but towards the boy that he kept directing Roman’s attention to. 

Roman shot one of the guards a glance, them catching on immediately. He stalked over to the boy, being careful to skirt around his vision so that he would not see Roman’s white outfit until Roman’s arm shot through the crowd and gripped his elbow. The boy squealed in such a way that Roman winced, shooting an apologetic glance around to the guests. Roman could feel his arm quivering underneath his own muscled and scarred hand – could see the whites of his blue eyes as he stared at Roman with words dying on his lips.

The guards spread themselves discreetly among the guests, beginning to take the food away. Indeed, as Roman grabbed the boy bodily and allowed his fingers to slip into his pockets, he felt a vial that the boy must have slipped up his sleeve mere moments before Roman had grabbed him. It was full – full of a see-through liquid that could have probably been mixed discreetly with anything – but Roman was not going to take any chances. He gave a few short words to the guard to prevent panic and to call servants in to take food away, not wanting any of the guests to panic. 

He frog-marched the boy from the room, his body little more than stubborn baggage. It seemed that the boy was too terrified to fight back, his feet frozen as Roman lugged him along through guests. Roman shot a few exasperated looks around, rolling his eyes and flashing his famous smile that had most of the royals laughing – just another drunk servant, caught by a vigilant guard. 

As he exited the hall and started down the corridor, the boy trembled so violently that Roman felt a wave of anger as he threw him against a wall. The boy crumpled to his knees. “Who paid you?” Roman kept his words like his sword – sharp, poised to slice, a clear warning. The boy shook his head anyway. Guards came running around the corner, taking one look around at the oblivious guests before grabbing at the boy. “He’s said nothing,” Roman told the commander, who nodded imperiously. “Don’t hurt –“

Roman faltered. Did this boy not deserve to be hurt? He’d just tried to hurt others – at Thomas’ coronation.

“We won’t do anything today,” the commander said, but only after the boy had been dragged out of earshot. “If he hasn’t said anything by the end of today or midday tomorrow, though, it’ll be another story.” 

Roman nodded, watching as the guards carrying the boy had reached the door leading down to the lower levels of the castle – and the dungeons. As they opened the door, the boy’s stature changed – became straighter, stronger. And the boy turned his head to look over his shoulder, and Roman’s heart froze at the sight of yellow eyes gleaming before he was dragged into the dark of the door. He told himself that it wasn’t possible – that he’d clearly seen blue eyes. 

Maybe it was just the excitement of the day.

As if on cue, bells started to peal, and the chatter of the great hall began dying out. The commander shot Roman an amused look as he jerked his head in a rather un-commanderly way and said “go on, now. And make sure those two behind that door stay quiet.”

“Sir,” Roman saluted and strode back towards the hall. Thankfully, people were still in the process of sitting down. As Roman was about to stride in and make his way back towards the door where he could just make out Patton’s head, still looking for where he’d gone, a hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed his arm. 

Roman found that he had perhaps judged the boy from before a bit too harshly as he himself bit back a squeal that would have probably ruined his reputation for years to come. 

Thankfully, he had enough sense to merely swallow that sound and tighten his jaw, swinging on his heel to look at the person touching him. “Roman,” Thomas smiled, and Roman lost his train of thought. Before, as he’d thought about Thomas being perhaps the only subtle prince that he knew, he’d been wrong. The man before him looked splendid.

He, too, wore white – although the make of it was far superior to that of Roman’s outfit. The threading was what Roman suspected was real gold, with the purple sash making its way down Thomas’ broad shoulders to his belt. He only bore a single sword – the scabbard simple, as was the pommel. As Roman tore his gaze up from Thomas’ outfit and landed it on Thomas’ own brown eyes, Thomas laughed. “If that’s your reaction, then I suppose I don’t have to worry about anyone else’s.”

“You –“ Roman swallowed, cursing himself. It wasn’t as though this were the first time he’d seen a pretty prince. “You look almost as dashing as me, I must say.”

Thomas laughed again, but Roman could just make out the traces of nervousness over the sound of the bells. “I should thank my servants again, then.”

“A pay rise must be in order,” Roman agreed, whistling as he again scanned Thomas from head to toe. “They’ve worked magic.”

“Are you suggesting that I was a wreck before today?” Thomas said, raising an eyebrow but smiling all the same. 

“I’d never suggest such a thing on your coronation day.”

“Yes, you would.”

“Thomas!” Roman said, laying a hand over his heart. “I am ashamed you think that of me. I’ll have you know that I would at least have the decency to say it tomorrow.” 

Thomas opened his mouth to reply, but a priest in the darkest purple and brown walked past, raising his white eyebrows pointedly. “It’s time,” Thomas said, looking at the great hall doors. “I’ve got to walk in there now.” 

“Yes,” Roman said, stupidly. “But I’ve just missed my chance to get back in there to watch you.”

Thomas slowly pinned him with a look. “You’re coming in with me.” 

“What? You’ve got to go in on your own,” Roman said. “And I’m no one – I’m not a guard, or a servant. I have no reason to go in at your side.”

“Technically, you’re going behind me on the way in,” Thomas said, moving himself into position behind the priest. “But you’re going to be at my side. Make sure you stand at attention.” 

“Thomas,” Roman repeated. “I’m no one to stand at your side.”

“Roman,” Thomas said, not even sparing a glance behind as the priest began slowly opening the door in time to the bells. “You’re you, and that’s always been far more than enough.” The doors opened, and it was all Roman could do to straighten up, place a hand proudly on the pommel of his sword, and walk steadily down the aisle after Thomas. It was easier than he thought – to simply stay a few steps behind the purple cloak spreading out from behind Thomas. How had he not even first noticed the cloak? It was a magnificent thing. 

No one even looked at him as he walked down the long aisle. Their eyes were glued onto the prince, that circlet still on his head. ‘As well they should be,’ Roman thought, pride simmering in every inch of him. For the first time, he enjoyed not being looked at – because it meant that no one was questioning his being at Thomas’ back. No one took a second look at him and thought he looked out of place. 

And Roman loved it. 

They reached the end of the aisle, and the priest gestured for the audience to sit. Roman took up his place just to the left of the altar, below the steps that Thomas had climbed to be right before it. Luckily, he was looking towards the servant’s door that still had Patton and Anxiety’s heads peaking out from the side, their eyes sparkling. They didn’t look confused either, Roman beamed to notice. They didn’t question what Roman was doing at Thomas’ back. 

The rest of the ceremony slipped away, although Roman’s face was beginning to hurt from the constant grin he wore throughout it all. Try as he might, though, he could not bring himself to banish it as Thomas repeated his lines after the priest, before bowing and having his silver band removed. The priest lowered the new crown onto Thomas’ brown hair and Roman almost felt the impact in his own heart as it rested – the perfect fit – on his head. 

Gold sparkled in the sun, and as Thomas rose and turned, the many purple stones set into it dazzled those who looked for too long. Roman was the first to bow – possibly too quick, for there was a beat of silence before the rustle of fabrics indicated everyone else following suit. Then applause tore through the room, and Roman could hear it echoed throughout the kingdom as the bells began to ring with even more vigour, shattering through the momentary silence that Thomas had had whilst repeating his vows to protect the kingdom. 

Roman waited just a moment longer to raise from his bow, peeking through his brows at his king and grinning like a fiend. Thomas smiled gently back – before reaching for his sword. The applause stuttered as he drew it, the blade singing as it came free from its scabbard. Roman forgot how to breathe as Thomas pointed the weapon at him with all of the power of kings and, his voice rising above the bells and yells and cheers, commanded “kneel.”

Heat thundered through his veins – confusion and fear. But distantly, he felt his body respond – his knees thudding against the purple carpets of the lower dais. He lowered his head, too – his grin slipping like water from his face. 

Thomas approached, and Roman wondered idly if his footsteps had always been that powerful, that steady. 

“Roman,” Thomas said, and laid the flat of his blade on Roman’s shoulder. He heard the unspoken part – just Roman – and smiled. His fear was swept away by that simple unspoken proclamation. “Do you swear to serve in my court from now until the day you die?” 

“And longer still,” Roman answered. Thomas then raised the sword to rest it on the other shoulder.

“Then rise, Sir Roman, a knight of our kingdom.” 

Roman indeed rose, fighting off the tears in his eyes. Our Kingdom – it was his, now, too. Thomas quirked a well-meaning eyebrow, gesturing to one of the servants that had appeared through the little door. The audience were making the loudest applause that Roman had ever heard – and as Thomas handed him a deep red sash that made his heart stutter as he reached to grab it, Roman took a breath.

“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing to Thomas. The sash was beautiful – he immediately clipped it into place, the ruby sheen standing out against the white of his clothes. 

“Sir Roman,” Thomas replied, turning and waving a hand to his audience. Roman stepped back as his King was swept into the festivities – of people wanting to touch him, to meet him now that he had a golden crown on his head. But Roman caught the quiet confidence behind the smile that Thomas gave to each and every congratulator and thought that perhaps, he could grow to thrive in attention as he had. 

People’s undivided attention on Thomas gave Roman the opportunity to slip slyly from the dais and stagger over to the small door – where Patton and Anxiety were standing outside, looking down at their feet as one of the servants berated them with an exasperated look in his eyes. Anxiety raised a brow at the shakes that had taken over Roman’s limbs, completely at ease with having caused trouble for the poor servants. 

“Roman?” Patton said, the moment that the servant had waved them away with a knowing sigh. “Are you alright?”

“He’s fine,” a cool voice said, disinterested. “I expect his heart rate is rather higher than what he’s used to – but that shouldn’t be too prominent a problem.” Roman turned and wasn’t at all surprised when it was revealed that the voice belonged to Logan. The man’s brown eyes glittered behind their glasses with an unspoken challenge as he pointedly met Roman’s gaze. 

Roman cleared his throat – remembering that whilst his instincts wanted to challenge Logan right back, he owed this man a debt. A debt for a boy too young, now probably cold and alone in the dungeons. “Thank you.”

There was a beat of silence among the four of them before Anxiety started sniggering. “Does saying those two words actually hurt you? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound more pained.”

“You stabbed him once,” Patton reminded him.

Anxiety thought for a moment. “I’ve only heard him sound this pained once before. Good job, Logan.”

“Thank you,” Logan said, clearly mystified. 

“See – that, Roman,” Anxiety said, gesturing to the stunned Logan, “is how you say thank you without sounding like a constipated duck.”

“Ducks get constipated?” Patton asked, shooting Anxiety a questioning look. 

Logan didn't stutter even for a moment. “Actually, they lack an anal sphincter, meaning they generally have no control over that particularly delightful urge altogether. So, in essence – logic would suggest not.” 

Patton and Roman gaped, but Anxiety shrugged. “Good to know,” he said, whilst Roman was seriously questioning if this was the first time they actually had someone knowledgeable in their midst. 

“As to your previous comment,” Logan said, turning briskly to Roman and ignoring his befuddlement. “You’re welcome – although I must say, you did take a while to understand what I was trying to communicate.” 

“Well, you weren’t exactly holding up a sign that told me clearly,” Roman said, affronted. 

“I didn’t think it logical to apprehend him in full sight of your influential guests – what would they have said, if a mere boy had gotten past every part of your defences with a vial of poison up his sleeve?” 

Roman hissed, glancing around to make sure no one had heard. When he was satisfied that the nearest person to their little group was the last of the stragglers following Thomas from the Great Hall on a tour through the kingdom, where he’d greet his people, he turned back to gauge the other reactions. Patton’s eyes were wide in worry, his hands brought up to grip his face. “Poison?”

Anxiety snarled quietly, making Logan shift on his feet in mild discomfort before turning back to Roman. “I do believe that was what his plan was.”

“How did you know?” Roman asked.

“Well he wasn’t exactly dressed as a servant – only a guest. And he bore no sign to indicate where he was from – nor did he have anyone else with him. So, when a random stranger dressed as a guest starts lingering around a food table, glancing at every single guard in the vicinity and frequently touching something in his sleeve, one can only make an educated guess.”

“I regret asking,” Roman muttered, his mind ablur with the exposition. 

“That was brilliant,” Patton cried, clapping his hands together. Logan smirked and adjusted his glasses higher on his nose – light flaring on the lens in such a way that Roman doubted it was unintentional. He fought the urge to touch his sash and preen.

“Brilliant,” Anxiety repeated flatly. “But need I remind you that you are also wearing no sign to indicate where you’re from, or have anyone with you?”

Roman started. “That is a point worth making,” Logan acknowledged, inclining his head just a fraction of an inch towards Anxiety, who merely raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. “I bear no marks because I hope to come into the very employment of King Thomas himself.” 

“Why would he employ you?”

Patton stepped lightly onto Roman’s foot, although Logan showed no signs of recognising the blatant disbelief in his question anyway. “What Roman means to ask is what position you would like? I wasn’t aware he was asking for any specific people.”

“I’m going to advise him – as although there seems to be no position that has been advertised, I deem that there is a great need.” Anxiety started to grin – but not at all mockingly at Logan. He grinned widely at Roman, as if knowing that steadily, the male was getting angry. 

“And why would there be a need for you to advise him?” Roman asked, puffing out his chest. Logan scanned him from head to toe pointedly, moving then onto looking over Anxiety and Patton. Anxiety shrunk away from his assessing stare, glaring at Logan for the first time – but Patton merely pouted and allowed Logan to make his statement.

“There’s a need for me, since the rest of the King’s court is a bunch of – I’m just going to go ahead and say it – idiots.” 

Anxiety didn’t even flinch – just pointedly looked at Roman and nodded in agreement. Roman looked down at his red sash and then glared right back at Logan – who’s eyes sparked with amusement, as if Roman was nothing more than a puppy thinking that it could take on a fully-grown hound.

Roman ignored the way that Anxiety smirked, and Patton cringed. “There is no way he’ll employ you; there’s simply no need.”


	6. 10 Months and 27 Days until Burning

“I’m not saying that you’re wrong, I’m just saying that you are less correct than I am!” 

“There is not even a microscopic chance that the scenario you just described would come to fruition.” 

Roman slammed the book down on the desk, enjoying the fact that Logan flinched slightly – but less enjoyed the fact that Anxiety, too, winced. Roman would care about that later, he decided; there was no time to worry about others when he was too busy fighting the utter idiot that Thomas had decided to employ as his official royal adviser. Not that Logan looked like an idiot – in fact, it was quite the opposite. He was handsome, in a clean-cut way, and wore clothes that were immaculate. It made Roman feel worse when there were mud and blood stains on his own clothes every time he saw Logan at Thomas’ side. 

As if his good looks were the only thing that Roman didn’t like.

The fact that Thomas had taken to listening to Logan like a duck to water was not particularly inspiring – there had been no allowances for random adventures to the treehouse in the marshes or sneaking around the towns since Logan had arrived. Roman did not like that - although it seemed Anxiety was more at ease than he had been in a while. 

“You cannot be serious when you say that having a ‘proper schedule’ is better than aspiring to and achieving your creative dreams!” Roman tried again, to argue his point. Anxiety sent him an amused glance but seemed more than happy to perch on one of the library’s many window seats and laugh quietly alongside Patton. Thomas, on the other hand, was sitting at one of the long tables that Logan had permanently adopted within the large hall – right between Roman and Logan. 

“Indeed, I can – as it is the only thing that keeps consistency in Thomas’ life, he requires that normalcy and routine.” 

“What good is that routine if he has nothing to strive for?” Roman said, hating the fact that whilst he could feel himself getting hotter and more worked up, Logan seemed just as impassive as ever. “He’d be useless!”

“Guys, I’m sitting right here,” Thomas said, raising a hand for emphasis. “Can we ease up on the comments about my productivity, please?” Logan merely fixed him with an unimpressed stare before switching his attention back to Roman with unflinching accuracy. Roman, whilst decidedly not glad to be on the receiving end of that focus, was still flattered that he’d managed to wind the uncaring male up to such an extent that he’d glare.

If Logan was truly unimpressed, he’d dismiss the disappointment without a second glance, not deeming them worthy of even a second more of his time.

So at least he was glaring at Roman. 

Roman would sooner set his own hair on fire than give up without the final say, however. “If you’re just sitting there, tell your ‘royal adviser’ that dreams are just as important to have as anything else.”

“On that note, kindly inform your ‘special friend’ that dreams are useless to have if you have no sense of routine and therefore your bodily functions suffer.”

“Who are you calling ‘special friend’?” Roman snapped, unable to hide his contempt for the title. It made him feel uneasy, hearing that from Logan’s unforgiving voice. Logan was Thomas’ adviser, and Patton was one of his catering staff. Both were prized among the walls of the castle – and Anxiety was a special case. People allowed him to come and go, as long as he didn’t make a mess and was silent – to which he happily complied. Roman had only recently been appointed as a knight – he was still learning about his duties. The fact that Logan had prioritised calling him a ‘special friend’ over ‘knight’ made his blood bellow.

“I have many other titles for idle dreamers, but that is among the kindest of them. I doubt you’d rather me go through the list I compiled earlier after our previous... Disagreement.”

The mention of said ‘disagreement’ made Roman see red. “You know that you were wrong about Thomas’ education, you pompous twit-“

“We agreed to let that one go after Logan nearly set you on fire!” Thomas shouted, earning himself a hiss from a librarian a few shelves away. He flinched – even kings had to obey the rules of the librarians. “Guys,” he amended, looking first to Logan and then settling his pleading gaze on Roman. “Please, you’ve been arguing non-stop on every single topic that I can care to name. You need to find something to agree on, or we’ll go mad.”

“Madder than usual, anyway,” Anxiety muttered, to which Patton frowned.

“I’m not mad, I’m a dad!” 

Anxiety’s apparent good mood vanished as he rolled his eyes. “I swear, one more dad joke and I will do something drastic-“

“Anxiety, no hitting Patton,” Thomas said, the drone of his voice telling Roman that he’d used that one sentence far too many times within their odd little group. “Patton…” Roman didn’t have to look to know that Patton was giving Thomas a pout, with his eyebrows raised in something of a grimace. “You do whatever, Patton.”

“Great! I’m going to eat a cookie.”

“What poetry,” Anxiety muttered, to which Roman snorted – but then shot Anxiety a glare, daring him to say anything about the fact that he’d just made Roman laugh. Luckily, Anxiety merely shrugged, allowing Roman to again turn his focus on the straight-backed male standing over an impressive pile of books just three meters away. 

“So how do we find something to agree on?” Roman asked, trying and failing to keep the mocking tone out of his voice. Logan didn’t look fooled for a single moment, his eyes narrowing in such a way that Roman could almost hear ‘halfwit’ being thought at him. 

“Go for a walk,” Thomas said, waving an exasperated hand towards the door. “I actually have to do some reading, which means that hearing you two bickering is not helping in the least. Go to the orchard. I don’t care, just get out.” Roman cast Thomas a wary glance – and wasn’t surprised to see the lines of tiredness and worry working themselves into the way he slumped forwards, in the way that his face was pulled into an uncharacteristic frown. 

“Alright,” Logan said, meeting Roman’s eyes for just a moment – long enough to see that he, too, saw the stress they’d both been unwittingly putting on their king’s shoulders. “Let us go to this orchard, then.”

Roman said nothing as he led Logan through the castle, not surprised that Logan deliberately kept a certain number of steps behind him. Logan was truly trying not to argue with him until they reached the orchard – and clearly, walking within the same breathing space would wreck that. Roman huffed a breath in annoyance, knowing perfectly well that he was spoiling for a fight – but also knowing that Logan was getting on his last nerve.

Roman led Logan out through the double doors, clean air helping to cool Roman’s heated cheeks. Their footsteps echoed off of the cobblestone floor as they walked in sulky silence past the guards on duty and through the guardhouse, swinging to the left on the path that led to the orchard. 

The moment that Roman reached the gate, he swung around dramatically, bowing. “Here you are, Mr Know-It-All – the orchard.” 

Logan raised an eyebrow. “If we’re resorting to childish insults, Sir Prat, we’re going to be here a while.”

As Roman was indeed about to spit back an immature retort, another voice sliced through the air. “Well, don’t you two look like you’re enjoying yourselves?”

That-

That voice.

Roman didn’t blame Logan for his puzzled expression as he shot to his feet, hand flying straight to where he kept his sword. He didn’t quite draw it – not yet, not when Logan still looked horrified that Roman’s first instinct to hearing that voice was to grab at his sword. But there was reason enough for the quick response. 

“You,” he snapped, his eyes finding the male owner of the voice easily enough. He’d never once, in all his dreams, forgotten what his yellow eyes had looked like as they gleamed down at him, basking in the power of having overpowered a small child. Because that’s what Roman had been, then. He’d been small, weak and fragile – homeless for years, longer still without a true family. And this man had wallowed in the power he’d had over him, having run him to the ground. 

But Roman was no longer that child. The familiar weight of the sword’s pommel in his hands proved it. 

“Me,” repeated the man, musingly. Those unnerving eyes slid to Logan then, and Roman felt the shudder of fear as he realized that recognition flickered in those yellow eyes – Logan knew this man. “Well, well,” he drawled, leaning against one of the trees and adjusting his cloak. “If it isn’t Logan. What a pleasure.”

“Hardly,” Logan replied, and Roman couldn’t resist wincing. Two of the most emotionless voices that he knew were warring together, and it was terrifying. “Why am I not surprised that you and Roman are acquainted?”

“As if,” Roman snarled. “I don’t even know his name.”

Yellow chuckled – then choked. Roman and Logan stood in silence as he drew himself up, nastiness glowing in his yellow eyes as though he were daring them to say anything about his stumble. As Roman decided that a sulky silence was best, he continued in a hoarse voice: “that’s because I don’t have one.”

“He has a title – much like Anxiety,” Logan interrupted fluidly, before Roman could retort. Yellow nearly stuck his tongue out – then checked himself, drawing an eyebrow up so that he looked downright evil. “Roman, meet Deceit. Deceit, you are not welcome here.”

“I’m hurt,” Deceit proclaimed, spreading his hands in a way that communicated sarcasm far better than that flare in his eyes. “Whatever would the esteemed King Thomas have to say about the hospitality of his prized advisor and closest friend?” 

“You leave him out of this,” Roman snapped, and it was only after Logan shot him a displeased look – already far too familiar a happening – that he realized that perhaps speaking was a mistake. It was already far too disconcerting that Deceit knew of how close he and Thomas were, or Logan’s official position. 

“I can assuredly inform you that Thomas would have far better subjects to discuss concerning you than merely our reactions,” Logan said, with a scathing quirk to his eyebrow that almost made Roman smile. It was nice when Logan was not angry or directing those barbed words at him – but he was directing them towards one of the people that Roman had been terrified of for the larger portion of his life. And that was what made Roman only stand a little straighter, move a little closer to Logan to have someone at his back. 

“Such fancy words,” Deceit tutted. He stepped away from the tree, closer to them, and Roman tensed. “But Logan, I regret to inform you that it is a shame; my business here does not concern you.”

“What do you want with Roman?” Logan asked, before cocking his head a little and murmuring to Roman. “You need to be careful – he’s a liar, and nothing more.”

“Truly, my feelings are hurt,” Deceit quipped, angling his head in such a way that Roman was reminded of Anxiety. “But I would remind you, Roman, to think about the fact that you owe me a favour.”

Logan took a shallow breath in, but Roman couldn’t think on that now. Not when he felt his temper rise with dizzying speed – another common happening in the week that Logan had been introduced. “I don’t owe you a thing besides a beating, in return for how you treated me when I was a child.”

Deceit smiled, and it was a terrible thing. “I should think that as not quite correct; it was dear Anxiety that entreated me to leave you alone for him to play with as he saw fit. But I still made the decision to back off, boy. I could have done so much – and yet I did not. Ergo, you owe me for that little debt.”

“I don’t quite recall signing anything to agree to that,” Roman said, vaguely aware of Logan having an aura as sharp as a knife. “I don’t owe you a thing.”

“Ah, but I should think that you do – and I warn you, I shall come to collect. Perhaps I’ll even make you an offer and be far kinder than I already have. We shall see in due course.”

As Deceit twisted on his ankle and stalked off into the fog building up around the orchard, Roman growled and made to go after him – there was no way that he was just going to let him go after that, to dangle empty threats and broken promises that would keep him up at night, trying to decipher them all. 

But then Deceit tripped – right over a protruding tree root. Roman gaped at the spew of swear words that spewed from that foul mouth, instinctively looking around for Patton so that he could cover his ears. “I mean,” Deceit muttered, deliberately not looking around at his audience as if he were hoping they hadn’t noticed a thing, “that didn’t hurt me at all.”

He kicked the tree root that had tripped him and again swept off, dragging his cloak behind him. It would have been a lot more foreboding if it hadn’t had been take two. Roman again made to go after him - 

But Logan merely placed a firm hand on his shoulder, drawing Roman’s eyes to where he was shaking his head slightly. “I don’t know how you got yourself mixed up with him,” Logan started, his intelligent eyes shining with concern behind his glasses, “but this is not entirely advantageous for you, Roman. He’s a dangerous opponent to have.”

Roman gestured wildly to the tree root that had downed said dangerous opponent, cheeks smarting. “He-“

Logan pinned him with a look that shut him right up. “Deceit does as he wishes – he comes, goes, and no one knows what he does in between. I’ve never quite… Solved him.”

“The way that you say that - it sounds like we’re all just puzzles to you,” Roman said, frowning at Logan’s questioning look that made it all too clear that they were all indeed puzzles for him. Roman wondered idly if he were sudoku or a Rubik’s cube. “What do you know about him – besides how dangerous he is or any of that dull stuff?”

“Let me see – he’s never met Thomas, but knows most people around him,” Logan said, his hand reaching up to hold his chin as he did when he was searching through the library within his mind. “He’s a liar, a vicious male with a history of manipulation, and seems to know what makes everyone… What’s the word… Tick.” Roman stared in the direction that Deceit had gone and wished that he hadn’t let him go. He had a feeling that his sword had longed to be acquainted with Deceit for quite some time – and he was now disappointed that he’d have to delay that meeting. 

“So I’ve got myself into a debt that is hardly fair with a guy who it seems potentially suicide to be debt to?” 

“To put it simply – so you can understand – yes.” 

“Thanks, Logan,” Roman said, turning to look at the male. His hair was slicked back in his usual fashion – he hated it when his hair stopped him from being able to read clearly. But Roman noted how a few strands had defied that and were lightly dangling into his eyes, and how Logan didn’t seem to yet care. 

The common mistake with Logan was to think him as entirely emotionless – but that was false. There were so many little ways that he showed that he indeed cared; it was just that he did not let emotion cloud fact. The fact that he had stepped up to deal with Deceit showed that he, in some way, cared about Roman and the way he would have dealt with him.

“I can’t quite tell if you’re being sarcastic,” Logan said, squinting at Roman from behind his glasses. Roman felt his nose flare in irritation – so much for caring. 

“Let’s go and find the others,” Roman said, disregarding the sarcasm comment. “I think it’s time that we let them know we’re not arguing anymore.”

“Let’s not be too ambitious, Roman.”

Roman fought a grin the entire journey back to Thomas’ library.


	7. 6 Months and 14 Days until Burning

“So, we’re ruling a kingdom?” Roman said, a smirk playing at his mouth as he nodded over the map of said kingdom pleasantly. “That’s fun.” 

Logan looked up from his book, rolled his eyes and went right back to reading.

Much to Thomas’s delight and Anxiety’s eternal horror, the two had been strangely cooperating quite nicely. Roman almost tolerated him willingly, now – though he had to admit that at certain points, the male made it very hard. It was as though Logan had steadily come to accept that Roman was, without doubt, going to do the stupid thing – and gave him advice to help him make the endeavour less ridiculous. 

Patton, meanwhile, picked up a miniature wooden castle from where it had been placed in the little box full of game pieces at the side of the huge – it took up the entire table – map. He also picked up a lumpy figure and held it up to Roman, closing an eye as if he were measuring them next to each other. “Hey, Roman – this thing almost looks like you-“ 

“You’ve missed the fact that this one is obviously crafted after you,” Roman replied, pointing lightly to the pig figure. Thomas’ mouth tightened, Roman well versed enough to know that he was trying not to smile in the face of taunts. Thomas didn’t often like insults – even meant in play – but there was a twitch to his lips that Roman recognised as restrained laughter. 

“That’s actually the symbol of our agriculture centre,” Logan spoke up, not looking away from his book as he idly spoke. “Hardly Patton.” 

“Thank you, Logan,” Patton said, wriggling his shoulders back with a pleased smirk.

“Of course, if it were Patton, it wouldn’t be as useful,” Logan muttered, although Roman had the suspicion that only he and Anxiety heard. Anxiety sniggered, leaning against the wall as he watched Thomas explain to Patton that the lumpy figure was actually a knight that hadn’t been fashioned yet.

“Wait, what?” Roman interrupted, his thoughts finally catching on. “That lumpy, disfigured thing is me?”

“Yes, but it hasn’t been carved yet!” Thomas insisted, holding his hands up and smiling. “I was going to ask them to give it armour.” When Anxiety sniggered again, Roman was infuriated to see that Logan’s lips were also inching upwards.

“I can see the likeness,” Anxiety said in a tone that suggested that he was having a grand time.

Roman pinched the bridge of his nose tightly, a hand going instinctively to his sash. “Shut up.” 

“I, too, can hypothetically see how they would link its image to your own, Roman.” 

“Logan, can you not take Anxiety’s side, it is thoroughly disconcerting.” 

Logan finally put down the book carefully onto the table at his side and ran an appraising gaze over Roman in response to his words. “I’m impressed a simpleton such as you would even be aware of the word ‘disconcerting’, much less use it. Good work, Roman.” 

“Logan, don’t be cruel,” Thomas chided, to which Logan shot him a thoroughly unconvincing innocent shrug. “Still, I’m trying to figure out which route the trading shipments should take.” 

Roman laughed. “As if trading shipments are your priority.” As he allowed himself to settle into a chair, he caught the look that Anxiety sent Thomas – a look mirrored by the tension evident as Patton went to sit on the arm of Logan’s armchair. It was a warning look. “Wait,” Roman said, now keenly aware that Thomas had yet to meet his eyes. “Are you being serious?”

“A King should be serious,” Logan said, but fell silent as Thomas shook his head. 

“Are you saying that this is what you’ve spent all of this time on? Trading routes?” Roman was slowly descending into a place that he’d went only a few times – the part of him that shook with confusion or anger – and all too often, both. “You’ve spent valuable time looking up rules to do with shipments?” 

Patton flinched at the disbelief in Roman’s voice, and for the briefest of moments, Roman was glad. Glad that perhaps his tone was powerful enough to have some sort of effect. But then he merely went right back to being angry. If he himself hadn’t been so busy organizing armies and guards and assuming Thomas was doing the right things as King, he maybe would have noticed that Thomas had been so wrapped up in anything but the kingdom’s real issue. 

“I’ve spent valuable time doing what needed to be done,” Thomas said, carefully. A small part of Roman wondered at the fact that Thomas thought he needed to be careful around Roman and was disappointed at himself that he couldn’t be better. But the larger part was roaring for some sort of explanation.

“What needs to be done is fairly obvious,” Roman fired back, unable to stop himself pacing. Energy was running through his blood, he needed to work it off, to move. “There are so many homeless people in this kingdom that it’s disgusting. We can help them.” 

Logan’s eyes flashed and snapped towards Roman. “In every kingdom there are some peasants who cannot afford a home,” Logan tightly snapped. Roman knew it was only because he himself was producing the nervous energy in the room, but his own attitude flared in response to Logan. “We cannot truly be different; there will always be those lazy people who will not work and so will not get a home.” 

There was a pause.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Roman asked. He saw Logan’s nose flare in anger and realized that yes – he was deadly serious.

“This trade deal needed to be absolved within a matter of months after I was first crowned,” Thomas supplied, tapping his foot loudly on the floor to drag Roman’s attention back to him. “I knew it was a priority. Roman, I’m not saying that your priority is not mine, but –“

“But that’s exactly what you’re saying,” Roman finished. Anxiety straightened, as if he were strengthening himself – but when Roman looked at him, his dark eyes were glittering as they scanned Roman and then Thomas and then back again. “I cannot believe that you weren’t going to help them as soon as you could – I can’t believe that you still aren’t going to, that they still aren’t even on your priority list.”

“You don’t know that,” Patton protested, but Logan’s hand found itself at the man’s knee. Patton ignored the touch, leaning towards Roman. “Hey, it’s okay, we can put it on the list now, it will get done!”

“Not quick enough,” Roman spat. “It’s been like this for months. In the past two weeks alone, I’m willing to bet that another ten people lost their lives on your streets, at least. And I let that happen, thinking that you were going to fix it as soon as humanly possible.”

“Roman,” Logan tried again, and on another day – any other day – Roman could appreciate that he was truly trying. He was being so careful, being so considerate in trying not to make this an argument. But right now, it just made him see red. “It’s not a logical or plausible to make this issue so high on the priority list over scientific research or becoming a competitive kingdom in terms of economy or inventions. We need to become a strong kingdom.” 

“We become a strong kingdom when there are no more weak people!” Roman shouted, making Thomas’ eyes spark in warning. He came around the table to face Roman, no longer leaning on the table for support. Roman didn’t miss the way that Thomas’ arm slowly snaked out and guided Anxiety behind him – as if Roman were about to draw the sword at his side and go for the shadow-eyed one. The fact that Anxiety moved without complaint, sliding quietly and smoothly behind Thomas, made Roman madder. “And there will be no weak people if they are made stronger! By helping them become strong, by building affordable houses, by offering support for those who cannot work, by setting up food and water so that there are no more days when we don’t know if we’re going to eat.” 

Another pause, but this time it was more painful.

“’We’,” Logan repeated. There was a beat of silence as Roman settled his furious gaze on him. “You said, ‘we’.” 

Thomas hadn’t moved his eyes from Roman’s. “I know why this is such a priority for you, Roman, I really do.” But he didn’t – how could Thomas, the true prince – King - the one born with all that Roman had desired in the world, truly understand why it was so important? “I am not saying that I will not help this situation, these people,” he said, still in the soft imperious voice that behind his back, Roman and Patton had once nick-named the ‘king voice’. “I am saying that if they are strong enough to last a little while more, if they can stay alive for just a bit longer, I will be able to help them.”

“They shouldn’t have to wait!” Roman fired back, hating that Thomas was so much more able to contain himself than he was. He took a step forwards, and Logan’s head shot straight up as the dark-eyed male swallowed and watched. Roman nearly laughed – there was no way that either Patton, Logan or Thomas himself could stop or restrain him if he decided to take a swing at his king. None of them had trained as much as he had. “They’ve had years of hating life, hating the way that they have no money, hating royalty for doing nothing when they are doing everything that they possibly can to get even a little bit of enjoyment out of life. Why should they wait a second longer? Why should transporting stupid silk or wheat around be a priority over people’s literal lives?”

“You don’t understand,” Thomas said, although it was not dismissive. Roman was glad, though, when he spotted the steel glint in Thomas’ hazel eyes – it meant that his temper was finally rising. ‘ _That’s it,_ ’ Roman goaded him with his own eyes. ‘ _Come to play, little King._ ’ Thomas’ mouth thinned as he drew himself physically back. 

“I don’t think that I am the one who isn’t understanding,” Roman said. But with the way that Logan had stood up from his chair, his arm lightly across Patton’s chest to stop him from being within Roman’s immediate hitting range, Roman hesitated. He saw the way the small, disfigured wooden piece had been dropped into the middle of the North Sea and his fury took a stumble.

He swallowed, feeling his anger as a writhing hot thing in his throat. And Roman stormed out of that infernal room, not bothering to shut the door behind him as he strode further, pleased that his steps were loud and damning against the castle’s floor. The room he’d left behind was silent.

*

“Want to explain to me what the hell that was?”

Roman wasn’t surprised, hours later, that it was Anxiety who found him sitting outside the little, run-down treehouse in the middle of the marshes. Anxiety hadn’t bothered with a dramatic entrance – he’d just walked steadily through the fog, although Roman had a distant suspicion that he’d purposely stepped on a few twigs, allowing them to snap underneath his foot so that Roman could hear that he was coming. He’d taken a good look at the poor tree that had taken the main brunt of Roman’s anger – the multiple scars across the bark and the discarded sword thrown a few meters away obvious hints as to what Roman had done to get rid of the lingering traces of fury in his blood.

“You can’t tell me that any of that was unpredictable,” Roman said. 

“No,” Anxiety replied, crossing his arms. Roman let his eyes wander – normally, he strictly forbade himself from intruding on anything that was in relation to Anxiety further than what they were both comfortable with. But today his rage had hacked at his common sense just as he’d hacked at the dead tree across from him – so he drank in the sight of Anxiety standing before him. “But you cannot tell me that you’re happy with the way you’ve left Thomas.”

“Let me guess,” Roman said, his eyes roving down the boy’s arms. It was funny – even though they’d known each other for sixteen years, he still sometimes thought of Anxiety as a boy. Perhaps it was his build – short, thin. Or perhaps it was the fact his shoulders were always slumped, making him look slighter than what he truly was. “Thomas is pacing in his room, stubbornly refusing to open a window even though both he and the room are impossibly hot, and he’s thrown a multitude of pillows.”

Anxiety blinked – but not in surprise. He of all people knew how well Thomas and Roman knew each other. Roman took the blink to mean a confirmation. “He said you’d either be here or training – you like to take out your frustrations in your physical activities.” 

“So, you checked the guard quarters to see if I were there and then came here?” 

“No. I came straight here, after allowing you a few hours to cool off.” Roman let out a hollow laugh that echoed off the empty void of the marsh. Anxiety knew him – had known him for sixteen years, just as before. Of course he’d known instantly where Roman had been. “So, what?” Anxiety said. “You throw a huge strop, earn yourself a few mutterings around the castle and then come here to finish your temper tantrum? How is that meant to get anything done?”

“I’ll forgive you for not knowing how anger works,” Roman said. His cheeks were stinging. “As if you could actually understand anything that extends past merely anxiety and stress.”

Roman watched as Anxiety’s arms tensed – his hands probably forming fists underneath his elbows, where Roman couldn’t see. “What are you saying?” 

Anxiety was not stupid – he knew well enough what Roman was saying. But he wanted Roman to make that conscious decision to say it right to his face and know the outcome – know that his words would have a dangerous effect. But Roman decided that he truly couldn’t feel any worse. “I’m saying,” he said, gritting his teeth, “that all you do is bring anyone down. It doesn’t matter if it’s me, or Patton, or Logan – or even Thomas. You only exist to make people miserable – hell, it’s even in the name. You’re a disorder. You’re just this guy that is around to force people to their knees, to stop them having fun, to stop them truly living.”

Anxiety didn’t even flinch.

Part of Roman wondered if he’d merely said words that Anxiety had heard before a million times. ‘ _Make me regret it,_ ’ he silently begged him. ‘ _Make me take it back. Make me feel something beyond this tiredness and frustration in my veins. Make me feel._ ’

But Anxiety did no such thing as he began walking away, his dark cloak whispering in the wind. As Roman reached for his sword and practically threw it into its scabbard at his belt, prepared to run after him and practically demand a retort, Anxiety stopped and looked back at him over his shoulder.

“Is it really any wonder that I don’t share my name?” 

Roman had thought that he couldn’t feel any worse – but he’d been entirely wrong.

He began running towards Anxiety, his eyes stinging and his body so tired – but Anxiety merely turned away into the fog and disappeared. And for some reason, Roman knew that even if he searched for days on end, he’d never find him. 

*

“Hey.”

Roman cursed, his hand flying towards the pommel of his sword in a heartbeat. He’d wandered back to the castle in something of a daze, thinking about everything and yet nothing. But he still squinted up a tree, where Patton was lounging on one of the lower but thicker branches. 

“Hey, Patton,” Roman said, his hand coming away from the leather hilt. He’d seen Logan’s wariness of the weapon during the confrontation, and now that his anger had faded to a mere pounding exhaustion, he had the sense to be upset about it. Had he ever raised a hand to any of them? “Why are you in a tree?”

“I feel like everyone’s gone barking mad today,” Patton said, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. Roman snorted, not having the energy to ignore the pun. “So, I thought I’d branch out, re-evaluate my roots, leaf people to do what they need to… All that good stuff.”

Roman sighed. “I’m just exhausted. I know there are so many things I need to do, that I should do to try and mend things, but I don’t know if I should. Because if I apologise now, I’ll be forced by my own morals to not bring up that same issue again – and I won’t allow that to happen. I can’t let their problems fade.”

“I understand,” Patton said, his eyes bright and clear as he began to move himself, brushing stray twigs and leaves away from his already-tattered clothing. “I know well enough why you feel strongly about people with that kind of background, too.” 

“It doesn’t give me an excuse to act like I did,” Roman muttered. It was something about Patton and his ability to make you feel as though nothing you could ever do would make him judge you. He would listen and offer his council – because he loved more deeply than anyone.

“No, it does not,” Patton readily agreed. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Patton – I don’t want to think anymore.” Roman rubbed his eyes, knowing and hating the fact that he sounded like a mere bratty child in equal measure. “I want to go to sleep and stay that way for an entire week.”

“I bet Thomas wants to sleep as well,” Patton said. “But I don’t think either of you will sleep very well tonight if you don’t do something. You both know that neither of you will sleep if the other is mad or sad.”

Roman nodded, distantly wondering what he could do. As the beginnings of an idea surfaced, he smiled at Patton. “Anxiety, too,” Roman said. “He won’t sleep well if I don’t talk to him again. Have you seen him?”

Patton hesitated, his smile slipping. “He left to go find you.” Roman stared at him for a long moment, Patton refusing to directly meet his eyes. Roman took a deep breath in – if Patton was covering for Anxiety, that must mean that he really did not want to see him after he’d said those things. And who could blame him? 

“He’ll change the world,” Roman said. 

“Yes, he will.” Patton bit his lip and jumped from the tree, catching Roman’s arm on the way down so that they both stumbled over the combined weight. “But what about you? The world will not stop to wait for you, Roman.” 

“No, it won’t.” Roman looked up the castle to where distantly, on the highest tower, the double doors of glass remained stubbornly shut. “But I’ve always known that.”


	8. 6 Months and 13 Days until Burning

Roman sat down on the wretched stairwell a mere day later and wondered where it all went wrong.

He’d been feeling good after talking to Patton – good enough to go in and write a letter, requesting a private meeting with his King in his rooms. It was formal, polite, kind. It was everything a respectful letter from a knight to his beloved king should be – except for the titles. Roman had left it addressed to just ‘Thomas’ and signed it from ‘Roman’. 

That should have been enough to convince Thomas that although he was angry, he was willing to try to cooperate, at least. 

He’d then spent the better part of his day telling all of the guards to strictly stay away from that room once the meeting had started – the last thing that Roman needed during that meeting was to blow his top and have the entire castle know about it. To make up for the inconvenience, Roman had promised to teach them a few drills – on which he’d then spent the rest of his day before falling into his cot, exhausted enough to be able to sleep. It only lifted his spirits to find a response from Thomas addressed to just ‘Roman’ sitting neatly on his bed, accepting the meeting. Roman had laughed at the space below just ‘Thomas’, where the King had mistakenly put a couple of ‘x’s before scribbling them out and writing “don’t mention this” below it in scrawling ink. 

So, he’d woken up, refreshed and hugely anticipating attending the meeting – and his clothes had gone. He’d dismissed it as a poor servant’s mistake, some person taking it away for cleaning. He’d hurriedly made do with a spare set, although it scratched something awful and didn’t quite fit right. 

He’d then tried to go to the library to search for some books to back up his cause – if Thomas was going to use Logan’s logic to fight, he’d have to be prepared. But as he’d politely knocked on the door to the library and given his most charming smile to the librarian, she coolly informed him that today was the annual day that they dedicated to doing inventory – and the hustle of more than fifty other librarians working frantically in silence had convinced him that this, too, was just one of those things. 

And so, he’d tried to find Patton, seeking some counsel – but the kind-eyed male was no where to be seen. And he could have sworn that whilst he had a budding knowledge of the castle and its many, many side passages, there had been an entirely different set of corridors put in. He’d wandered around, lost, until at last he’d randomly come across his own bedroom again. He didn’t have to wonder about the time – he knew that he was so very late to his meeting with Thomas.

That was exactly how, then, he had ended up by sitting on the stairwell and wondering where it all went wrong. His musings did not help too much – he couldn’t sit still, so promptly heaved himself up and stalked towards his bedroom.

He took most of his frustration out by kicking the poor door to his bedroom, planning on grabbing his scribbles from this morning and sprinting up to Thomas’ room to make up for his abysmal morning, but stopped short on his way to the small drawers by his bed.

Because someone was in it.

“Whilst I’m entirely used to the situation of someone being in my bed,” Roman drawled, closing his eyes for a heartbeat to curse himself for the blatantly obvious lie, “I don’t think it is entirely wanted right now.” Then he opened his eyes and really looked at who was sprawled across his bed, leaning against the wall and smirking at him. “You, again?” Roman said, trying not to feel like the universe was against him and failing miserably. “How did you even get in here?”

“I most certainly did not follow you and Logan a couple of weeks ago,” Deceit smirked. “How kind of you to lead me through an unused and private door.” 

Roman snarled. “I should call in the guards right now.”

“You should. Pity they’re all upstairs, dealing with a dangerous situation.”

“You-“ Roman faltered. _Thomas_ was upstairs, waiting for him to come and join him, in the meeting that Roman had insisted upon. “Bastard – what have you done?”

Deceit smiled. “I’ve done nothing – but you, on the other hand? You were the one to request a meeting with his royal highness upstairs, and how convenient that you mysteriously did not turn up… Whilst a wolf did.” 

_“You set a wolf on Thomas!?”_

“Relax, the guards ran to the room the moment that Thomas yelled. But they’d all been nowhere near, as you told them yesterday –“

“To leave the room alone,” Roman finished, even as his veins flooded with ice, “because I wanted a private, official word with my King.”

“Your King,” Deceit mimicked, “shall not be impressed with you after today, I do not think.” Roman seethed, pondering on how he could make people see the truth. He could almost see it playing out in his mind – _‘yes Logan, I’m aware of the logical assumption that I set a wolf on my King, who I famously got irritated with yesterday. I’m also glad that Deceit followed us through a private door – entirely an accident, it’s not like I led him purposely. I just want you to think of all I’ve done for Thomas – lead him into dangerous adventures, nearly getting him killed if it weren’t for Anxiety, and annoying him with my own personal opinions. Also, it’s a well-known fact that I covet his position – but I did not attempt a murder! I promise!’_

He came back to focus on Deceit’s smirking, smarmy face as the yellow-eyed male enjoyed watching him realize exactly how this tale would be spun. “Thomas won’t believe it for a moment,” Roman said, ignoring the way that his heart thundered at the contrasting thought. What if Thomas did not believe _him_ , the one he'd grown up with? What if Thomas truly believed that Roman would want to hurt him, just for a chance to get at the crown? “He trusts me.”

“Of course, he does,” Deceit crooned, and Roman was reminded of the one warning Logan had left him with – about the fact that even his name told Roman that Deceit was lying.

“Give me one reason why I should not run you through with my sword and drag your body upstairs, showing them the reason that I was not there? Logan knows what you are – he’ll understand.”

“Logan doesn’t know what to think – Thomas sent him away, after all, because he wanted to have a private word with you. He already thought you were trying to usurp him and all that ghastly nonsense called politics. All Logan knows is that you are mad with Thomas, and you are the type of person to hold a grudge,” Deceit said. “And now you’ve made Thomas send him away, which I’m willing to bet did not help his attitude. Once you’ve made Logan mad, believe me when I say that he will never trust you again. He won’t trust anything you say – much less back you up against what Thomas already believes.” Roman knew that he was right – but how else would he have gotten Thomas to listen to the things he’d wanted to say, without logic ripping it to shreds? He’d had to get Logan out of the way – but once he lost Logan’s trust, he would be seen like Deceit – and how would he manage to get Logan’s approval then? 

“Ah, helplessness,” Deceit crooned. “That’s one of my favourite faces you’ve made so far, Roman. Do make it again.” 

Roman tried – damn him, he honestly tried – to school his features into bored neutrality. But he was struggling to see the way out of this. The one time that he had to make a public argument with Thomas and Logan, and it led to this – just his luck. His own reputation swung to Deceit’s will, twisting people’s expectations into whatever he so desired. “And what is the point?”

“Besides making your life hell?” Deceit asked, and Roman glared at him. “I want to make you a deal. If you agree to assist me in one plot, just one, then I shall march you up there and declare myself the villain; I shall make you out to be entirely innocent – if you desire, I shall even state how valiantly you fought against every opponent I summoned to battle you.” 

“And if I do not agree to assist you, you shall disappear and leave me to sort this mess out.”

Deceit laughed. “Sort it out? You cannot sort it out – not this mess. I’ve wrecked too much, made too perfect a structure for you to ‘sort it out’. No, Roman – if you do not agree to assist me, I shall leave you to stand alone in the storm I’ve created. I shall leave you to drown in an ocean with bottomless depths. I will leave you alone to fight an eternal number of monsters until you fall, wishing that you’d said yes.”

Roman did not doubt for a single moment that this was a threat, and that he was dealing with someone incredibly dangerous. After all, Logan had been wary of him – and any enemy of Logan’s was someone to watch out for. 

But despite the absolute direness of the situation, Roman couldn’t help but smile in a broad, sweeping spread of his lips and teeth as he fought off the laughter that Deceit clearly hadn’t planned for. “I’ve never heard such dramatic nonsense in all my life,” he said, unable to contain the laughter, “and I am _me_ – I am literally the dramatic nonsense guy, and never have I heard ‘eternal number of monsters’ and all that ‘stand alone in a storm I’ve created’ nonsense!” He ended with an actual laugh that was deep, unable to stop. He placed an elbow against the wall, supporting his head as he laughed. 

“Well this is such a delight, to see that you’re so happy about the prospective partnership between us,” Deceit said, although Roman could tell that he knew he’d lost the moment that he thought Roman too cowed. He disregarded the fact that until he’d been utterly lost during Deceit’s speech, he had indeed been feeling fear. “I am so happy that you find me amusing.”

Roman let loose another roar of laughter that had the guy flinching and nearly knocking into the opposite wall. “Oh, you are a liar,” he said, wiping his eyes. “And now, I shall take you to my King and he’ll decide what to do with you.” 

“Not going to make a decision yourself? How typical,” Deceit pouted, all traces of the noble and esteemed villain gone in the face of his embarrassment. “Typical of you to rely on the true royalty of this place.”

“I’m royal enough,” Roman replied, ignoring the way that Deceit’s eyes sparked with sudden and silent knowledge. “Now move.” 

“I don’t think so,” Deceit said, stalking towards the window with all of the attitude of a toddler being denied dessert. Before Roman could cry out, he climbed up to the narrow strip of glass and mockingly sent a salute back. “I won’t be back,” he said, and suddenly Roman’s world swam.

He clenched his eyes shut, stumbling against the wall as his head suddenly felt very, very light. By the time he opened his eyes to clear vision rather than a messy blur of colours and shapes, Deceit had long gone. Roman dragged himself to his feet, wary of the dizziness returning – but the floor stayed very much below his feet and the room remained the right way up. 

So, Roman did what anyone else would do.

He ran straight towards Thomas’ room, the mysterious passages that had gotten him so helplessly lost before disappearing as though they’d never been real. He leaped up stairs and hurdled around corners until he was right outside Thomas’ door, where a mass combination of people were huddled. 

The guards drew themselves up when they caught sight of him – although one look from the head guard who had once been Roman’s superior told him enough of a warning. 

Blood was splattered widely – across a wall, along the floor – and Roman found himself scanning all people for injuries, wondering just how wolves could bring up this much carnage. 

All those thoughts were banished, though, as he saw the bodies of the wolves themselves.

They were not just waist-height wolves that he’d been imagining – they were huge. When stood up, they must have been the size of horses – taller, then, if they stood up on their hind legs. Suddenly, the wounds that a few of the guards were sporting made sense. The gauged shoulder, the cut marring the skin of the neck – they were all injuries situated high on the body. Not the blows and bites to the neck that was typical of a wolf attack.

Roman strode towards the hurt guards, taking inventory. “Take these men straight to the sick bay,” he barked at a few of the newer guards without injuries. They nodded hastily, and the crowd of people began thawing. “Get some servants to clear up the mess before there’s panic. The uninjured guards can drag these carcasses out – don’t bother skinning them or butchering them. They aren’t natural, and I don’t want any trace of them left. Burn them and burn them well.” 

“They were dead before we got here,” one of the uninjured guards was muttering loosely to his friend, and before Roman could react to that information, another voice rang out shrilly. 

“Roman!”

Roman turned towards the sound of the cry as Patton flung himself at him. Roman caught him and forced him back, his eyes hurriedly scanning the man’s body to search for blood. His eyes searched the male frantically – but found none. “You’re alright,” Roman breathed before folding him into an embrace. “Thomas,” he said, drawing back. “Where’s Thomas? Is he alright? Where is he?”

“He’s inside,” Patton said, at the same time as Logan opened the door from inside and froze at the sight of Patton and Roman storming towards him.

Logan opened his mouth – relief crumpling his mouth into a twisted gasp. 

Before Logan and Roman could scan each other – each of them only truly believing their eyes when it came to diagnosis of the other – Patton stepped from Roman’s side and gave Logan a single look – a look that threatened dire consequences if Logan voiced the thoughts of panic tumbling through his expression.

Logan shut his mouth. 

Roman decided he’d marvel at that fact later as he practically flung himself into the room, looking at the blood that had been spilled inside and scanning for the one person that he wanted to check. “Thomas?!” 

“Roman.”

His heart sprung into his throat as he registered the dull tone of his king’s voice, out on the balcony. He ran towards it, fumbling a bit with the door handles until Patton stepped in to help with equal haste, opening the doors and barging through them. Thomas was in his white clothes, which made it all too easy to spot the huge rip from his left shoulder to his waist – Roman nearly swore, searching for blood, ready to roar for a medic to come and see to Thomas – but Thomas help up his hands. “I’m alright; not a single scratch on me.”

Roman fumbled on his fear. “Not –“ 

“Not hurt,” Thomas repeated. Roman fell into him, Thomas’ arms open and waiting – because he knew that there would be no other way to make Roman understand. No other way to make sure that Roman knew, with upmost certainty, that he was truly fine. “Not hurt.”

“It wasn’t me,” Roman almost cried into Thomas’ shoulder, glad that whilst he was shaking, his voice wasn’t. “I swear on my life and the kingdom and the people’s lives that it wasn’t me-“

A pointed cough from behind stopped his mess of a speech, and he realized that he was squeezing Thomas far too tight. He hastily stepped back, back to where Patton was waiting – with Logan right behind him, watching him closely. “What were you saying, Roman?” 

“It wasn’t me, I swear.” Roman glanced nervously between Logan, Patton and Thomas – but all three of them shared a confused glance. 

Logan shot Patton a puzzled glance before trying to speak. “You think that – that we would believe you’d do this?” 

A snort came distantly from somewhere behind Thomas, and Roman experienced something close to a heart attack as he saw Anxiety sprawled against the balcony railings, blood seeping from his side – and yet still managing a sarcastic smirk. 

Roman almost decided right then and there – that Anxiety’s smirk was the singlehandedly both the most beautiful and _infuriating_ things ever to grace the earth. 

Beautiful – because it made his dimple stand out, because it coaxed out a little colour in those black eyes, because it made his eyebrows quirk upwards.

Infuriating – because the boy had no business distracting Roman with things of beauty when he was bleeding out and Roman’s vision was tumbling into a sky of blurring images as he couldn’t look away from that wound -

“You think we’d believe that you’d do this?” Anxiety repeated, before sucking air through his teeth in a low hiss, wincing as his side must have throbbed from the effort. “You truly are every bit of the half-wit Logan says you are.” 

Logan tutted somewhere behind Roman – but Roman’s world no longer extended past the boy on the floor, propping himself up against the bannister. Everything else was a blur – a murky shade of nothing that Roman could not be bothered to focus on. Distantly – so far away – he was aware of the constant jabbering of someone’s voice, rising into desperation. “Why isn’t someone here – why aren’t you getting help? Someone – someone needs to help, please, help him –“

It wasn’t until Anxiety looked at him levelly that he came to the realization that it was his own voice – and it occurred to Roman that at some point, he must have sunk down to his knees, to be looking straight at Anxiety. “Roman,” he said, “I will be fine.” Roman choked out a laugh that sounded strangled even to his own ears. His hands found themselves on Anxiety’s side, where the gash was – he panicked at the warmth of the liquid he felt. 

He was aware of Thomas’ hand on his shoulder. “Roman,” Thomas’ voice said, although Roman was busy sweeping his gaze up and down Anxiety’s body for other injuries. “Anxiety will be fine.” 

It was only because Anxiety’s eyes flashed briefly that Roman noticed, for the first time, Anxiety’s discomfort about his name. And it wasn’t until those dark eyes refused to meet his own that he was reminded that he might be the reason why. “You are not, and have never been, a disorder. You are, without doubt, the best person I know to be constantly selfless when it comes to danger and keeping us out of it. You are you, and I – we would never have it any other way.”

Anxiety looked at him, eyes shining, and Roman once again realized that those words had come from him, from his voice. Roman held his gaze – until someone cleared their throat behind him, and Anxiety dropped his gaze and wriggled slightly away from him. Roman glanced behind – to find Patton looking like he was forcibly holding in a squeal, Logan looking exasperatedly pleased and Thomas grinning like an absolute idiot. 

“I didn’t realize you knew how to be sincere,” Logan said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall of the castle. Patton lightly patted his shoulder, almost jigging up and down.

“Roman! That was, without doubt, the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever heard –“

Thomas rolled his eyes at Patton’s non-stop tirade before his gaze was caught by Roman’s hands, covered in Anxiety’s blood. “Why aren’t we getting help?” Roman asked, careful not to look at Anxiety again – because if he was blushing, Roman would probably blush as well… And then there would be no hearing the end of it from either Logan or Patton. 

Thomas shared a glance with Anxiety for a split second, a question framed in his eyes. If Roman hadn’t been too busy looking at the wound and leaning ever-closer to the hurt boy, he might have noticed it when Thomas brushed off the question with no trouble. “Come inside and tell me about why we would think you’d do this,” Thomas said, gesturing inside. Roman hesitated only for a second – but as Patton and Logan went smoothly inside, pausing only to give a cheery wave to Anxiety, Roman realized that if Anxiety had been in immediate danger, they’d be acting on it. As all four of them turned to go inside, however, a single word was spoken by the man they’d left behind.

“Virgil.” 

Patton froze and Roman nearly walked right into him, had Logan not caught his shoulder. Thomas slowly swung around first, his brown eyes going straight to where Anxiety was lying. “Virgil?”

“My name,” the wounded man said, wincing as if the name caused him pain. “My name’s Virgil.” 

“Virgil?” Logan repeated slowly, drawing out the sounds as though they puzzled him.

Roman bit his lip, still refusing to turn around so that Anxiety – Virgil – would not see him and think that he was laughing at him. In truth, he was just so shocked that the name had come out of nowhere that he wasn’t sure how to react. His mind was silent. 

“I think that it’s an amazing name,” Thomas said, and although his voice was steady, Roman could tell that the casualty of his voice was calculated – he was as shocked as he himself was. 

“It’s different,” Patton said, his smile shining brighter than the sun, “but I like that it’s different.” 

“I do like it,” Logan agreed.

Roman turned around then, feeling Virgil’s eyes on his back. He opened his mouth – despite having nothing to say. As Virgil looked at him with fear in his eyes – the fear of an impending laugh, or a jest – Roman held it back. He said nothing – and Virgil understood. 

They smiled at each other before Thomas grabbed Roman’s elbow and steered him into his chambers, the slight shaking of his hand communicating the panic that Roman indeed knew he’d been feeling. The quiet words of a smug “you can call me Virge,” followed them into the cool – and thankfully now clean – room.


	9. 5 Months and 11 Days until Burning

Roman shot a wry glance down the street, marking old places where he himself had once slept, or hidden, or lived. It was haunting to be back where he’d once had to make a living for himself – harder still to see the faces that had both helped and tormented him – but he was here on business.

Business that did not require righting some old, malicious wrongs done to a small boy of twelve.

Since the incident weeks ago, Thomas had given Roman his official order of what was to be done – had murmured it as Logan, Roman and Thomas had watched the smoke from the cursed magic of the wolves’ curl into the air. 

“I need him found,” Thomas had said, after gaining an approving nod from both Logan and Roman – both of them agreeing, for once, without a single mumble of a complaint or hesitation. “Roman – I don’t care what you have to do, or where you have to go. He managed to sneak wolves into my castle, wound one of my people.” 

“I have reason to believe that he nearly poisoned people at your coronation, too,” one of the soldiers had stepped in, wincing as he took his first breath of the putrid air. “We have a prisoner that conveniently died in our dungeons, despite being kept perfectly safe. He told us nothing – but occasionally his eyes would turn this strange shade of yellow. It wasn’t until after I heard Sir Roman’s description that I made the connection.”

Roman had almost snarled – all that grandeur was just another ploy, some way to distract the guards and his attention whilst Deceit snuck into the dungeons and killed that poor boy, for fear of him telling his secrets. 

But now that time had passed, and he’d taken to the streets in which he’d first seen Deceit, Roman was questioning whether the actions he was taking were wise. Logan had offered to accompany him – but Roman had declined. It would be better if they split up and covered more ground anyway – and acting as though his pride had been wounded by the suggestion had been easy enough.

In reality, he hadn’t wanted anyone’s company in this place.

Because he didn’t want anyone to see the way he clutched at the ruby red sash around his chest like it was a lifeline, or the way that sometimes his eyes would snag on a forgotten corner of a street and stay there for a long time. The town wasn’t different. It hadn’t changed. But he’d changed, had come so far from a child living on scraps and fighting his way through life.

When he’d ran through it with Thomas and Virgil on his heels, their smiles were bright enough to blot out the shadows of his past.

He was alone now, and the shadows that were creeping in knew it. 

Roman blinked, coming back to his senses. He’d been staring at the old, broken fountain in the middle of the lower-class courtyard for far too long – people were starting to whisper. Cheeks almost as red as his sash, he swung himself back onto his horse’s saddle and curbed the horse around, riding her out of the town’s gates and into the very outskirts – a mere jump over the stone walls away from the marshland that he undoubtedly liked much better. 

“I approve of that – I doubt Deceit would have been there.” 

Later, Roman would deny to the ends of the earth that he jumped in his saddle at Logan’s entirely cool voice. The male was atop a brown mare, only a tad shorter than his own grey one – but Logan was much more poised than he was, his back straight and head held high. “You – what?” Logan’s eyes narrowed slightly at Roman’s high voice, but he didn’t comment on it. 

“Deciding to move on from that town – I cannot see the possibility of Deceit staying there.” 

“He has before,” Roman shrugged, his mare slowing her paces to keep time with Logan’s. “He was there with a couple of others, more than a few years ago.”

“Others? Can you elaborate?”

Roman could – but he didn’t want to. Not with the town so very close, not with the shrieks of children so familiar - “I mean – I know that there were others with him. One of my earliest memories were them chasing me through the streets – I’d picked the wrong day and the wrong battle to fight. There must have been about four of them… Maybe three… It’s strange, I can’t exactly remember. I only knew Deceit by his yellow eyes; he was the one that cornered me, in the end.”

“One can’t expect a child to remember accurate details,” Logan murmured. “Deceit cornered you? Is that why he states you owe him?”

“I can’t remember why he was so extraordinarily annoyed at me,” Roman said, ignoring the way that Logan coughed quietly. “But I remember never being so scared in all my life – and I’d been scared plenty. And then Virgil came.”

“And Deceit left you alone? Despite the fact that Virgil, at the time, was also a small child?” 

Roman opened his mouth to offer some sort of defence – but none came. “It didn’t seem to matter – Deceit treated Virgil as an equal. In fact,” Roman said, the weak memory of that day starting to come back, “Deceit almost seemed scared of him. Well, not scared – but wary. And come to think of it, he looks like he hasn’t aged a day. He looked exactly the same as he did when he caught up to me.”

Logan’s careful, knowing look unsettled Roman enough that he rode in silence for another few minutes, allowing the town to slip into the background as Logan began leading them both away. As the other sounds began to fade into the background, Roman found it easier to breath again, to think, to remember to blink and keep his hands still instead of fidgeting. 

“Where are we going now?” Roman asked, the road bland enough that there was no hint as to where they were heading. He had little idea as to which towns Logan had already covered – and they’d already spent nearly a month on the road, combing the area for a man – or beast – that did not want to be found.

He didn’t want to admit that he missed the castle, its walls, his tiny bedroom. Or that he missed Patton’s cheerful greetings in the morning, the way that the man often threw a scone at his head on the days that Roman missed breakfast due to training. Or Thomas, the way that the King had probably not done an inch of exercise without Roman’s endless nagging to do so. 

Roman forbade himself to think any more - of any others.

“We’re heading back,” Logan said, keeping his eyes steady on the road ahead. Roman’s heart leaped at the words. “Back to the castle. It’s been long enough, and I’m sick of travelling and sleeping at inns.” 

“I hear you,” Roman sighed. “I haven’t slept properly in weeks.”

Logan, then, shot him a look. “Didn’t you sleep at the proper taverns that I’d told you about?” 

Roman flushed. “Not exactly – “

“What, exactly, did you do with the money that Thomas allotted you, meant for your renting of one room per night?” Logan’s tone wasn’t particularly accusatory – but Roman could interpret the potential for an argument a mile away.

He wasn’t in the mood to fight – which, later, would have shocked him. So instead he rolled his shoulders back and smiled. “Don’t worry – I rented one room per night, as Thomas said.” 

Logan, thankfully, let it go. 

The logical man would have probably scoffed anyway, once he’d heard that Roman had offered the rooms that he’d rented to the nearest vagrant that he could find – every night. And had slept either on the street or in barns for every single night. 

Roman didn’t need that attitude. Not right now.

The two travelled in a rare comfortable silence for a few hours, stopping only to grab a few apples from the trees bordering the road. Roman saw how Logan perked up the moment the top of the tallest tower of the castle peeked at them over the darkening horizon and joined him in a placated, tired smile. There was a strange feeling now – the feeling that Roman had steadily grown used to the sound of the hooves echoing on the stones, the wind dancing in the leaves.

But as much as he was now used to it, the sight of the castle broke it. 

“Are you afraid?” 

He didn’t blame Logan for blinking once at him before turning that unflinching gaze towards the castle. Roman couldn’t even blame him for the stuttering response – a rare occurrence for the structured speech of the King’s Royal Advisor. “I – It’s hard to talk – about emotions.” 

“Why? Emotions are easy to talk about,” Roman said. “Feelings and aspirations and wishes and dreams – they’re all that’s clear. You can put a label on most of them, surmise most of them. Granted, the sheer number of labels on some of them are daunting sometimes, but they’re still neutral territory.”

“Emotions are not really – they play no part in me,” Logan said, his voice halting for the first time since Roman had known him. “Naturally, I have things that I enjoy participating in – but feelings, to be blunt, are nonsense. They turn even the most respectable people into jittering messes; when people start doing things for feelings, instead of for logic, there are never favourable outcomes.” 

“But you must have feelings,” Roman needled. “Doing things for the sake of love or hatred makes people understand where their priorities in others lie.” 

“I have feelings,” Logan agreed. “But while some people allow them to influence what they do, I only allow logic to dictate my actions. That being said, irritation and annoyance are two emotions that I connect with and understand regularly.” Roman pulled a face, which Logan pulled right back before he realized what he was doing and drew himself back up to being cold. “Feelings for me are muted.”

“Muted?”

“Like a blanket’s been thrown over them. I know that they’re there – they irritate me sometimes. But I never seem to feel them to the extent that others do; I can’t see myself doing anything only for the sake of making myself feel a certain way.” 

“Feelings are all that I go by,” Roman said, right as the gate to the castle swam into view just atop the hill. 

“That explains a great deal,” Logan replied, before cantering the rest of the way to the castle stables. Roman barked a short curse and sprung his mare into action, racing to catch up. By the time both men had reached the stables, both were panting and insisting that they’d won. 

They resumed the argument, insisting that emotion or logic was more important, as they trekked up the path to the castle. Before they could reach the small door that led to one of the servant’s kitchens, however, a light blue blur ran to join them, cannoning straight into Logan with impressive force. 

“You’d think we’d been gone for a month,” Roman nonchalantly and sarcastically told Logan, who looked like he’d been winded and frowned crossly at the culprit.

“I haven’t seen either of you for weeks,” Patton insisted, drawing himself back from Logan to clutch Roman’s sleeve. “Both of you searching for Deceit means that I’ve been left alone to amuse myself!” 

“That is exactly the true tragedy of this entire endeavour,” Logan commented, meeting Roman’s gaze exasperatedly. Patton linked his arm neatly through Roman’s and began dragging them both towards the door, where he’d surely press them with far too much food and hot drinks. Roman wondered, idly, how long he’d been watching at the door for the pair to return.

Perhaps it had been since the moment that they’d both left.

“I heard nothing from anyone,” Roman sighed crossly, glaring at his shoes. “We aren’t even the slightest bit closer to finding Deceit.”

“Don’t think that it was a waste of time,” Logan replied, pushing his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose. “Searching for him was the logical thing to do, after all.”

Patton squeezed Roman’s arm in what he probably considered a comforting gesture – but Roman merely smiled slightly and pulled away. As much as he’d missed the man, the weight of his failure was pressing hard onto his chest, making any contact almost repulsive.

Whether his companions noticed was another matter; Patton started to talk constantly, firmly leading Logan back to the door he’d just burst out from. Roman drifted in and out of paying attention, walking just half a step behind Logan. As Patton slipped through the door, Logan making to follow him, Roman’s hand flashed out and rested gently on his other elbow.

Logan blinked at him, those dark eyes full of nothing but understanding.

Roman smiled. “Do you know what else would have been the logical thing to do?”

“I probably do,” Logan answered. “But that’s awfully vague; to what are you referring?”

“You saw Patton coming a mile away,” Roman muttered, raising a suggestive eyebrow. “Surely it would have been logical to step aside at the final moment and dodge him, instead of having him barge into you?” 

Logan gave him a smile that seemed faintly wicked. “That rather depends on what outcome I deemed preferable, Roman, doesn’t it?”

It rather did, Roman supposed, as he watched Logan climb into the door after Patton.

As he watched Logan’s dark eyes follow Patton, bright with intrigue.

It did.

*

Barely an hour later, Roman was grinning at the sight of Logan glaring at Patton with all of the fury of an army. “You’re telling me,” Logan was saying flatly, “that your way of amusing yourself was to organize a giant party?”

Patton nodded earnestly, beaming even as he nimbly scooted around the table to hide behind Roman. Roman was half in amusement, half in exasperation – but allowed the male to use him as a shield against the glare that Logan was giving Patton. He couldn’t resist wriggling his eyebrows at Logan, though – and Roman decided that some things in life were definitely worth incurring the wrath of the man of logic. 

Across his bedroom, Thomas was slumped in his armchair – and had his face in his hands. If Roman squinted, he could spot the shaking of Thomas’ shoulders that indicated the king was very close to laughing. He would have joined him in the act, but the way that Patton was gripping his arm with enough strength to strangle anyone was forbidding him to do so.

The glare that Virgil was giving Roman, though, was something to be feared – so much so that Roman lightly nudged Patton from out behind him to stand on his own. Virgil continued glaring at Roman anyway – but Roman found that he didn’t mind as much as he would have a month ago.

The boy was perched on the edge of Thomas’s desk, where he’d been from the moment that Patton had essentially dragged the two through the door. He hadn’t moved to embrace either Logan or Roman as Thomas had done immediately but had rather waved at them from afar. 

There was no sign of the injury that had shocked Roman to his core when he’d last seen the dark-eyed man – no sign of bandages or hurt from the way he moved and breathed. If his own hands hadn’t been coated in Virgil’s blood just a few weeks ago, Roman would have never even noticed that he’d been nearly gutted by Deceit’s wolves. He hadn’t seen him since that day – had thrown himself into finding Deceit with every effort, filled with nothing but rage every time he thought about the way Virgil had been hurt. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d been so caught up in trying to make sure he’d never be hurt again that he’d sacrificed ensuring Virgil was doing fine.

Although if that glare was any hint, Roman would hazard a guess that he was perfectly okay. 

There was a beat of silence before Roman realized that he’d been staring – and that Logan was raising his eyebrows pointedly at him. Roman thought quickly of a response, which was a lot more difficult when one had been too busy staring at another instead of paying attention to the conversation. “I like parties?” Roman hedged a guess, shrugging. “Is that what you want me to say?”

“As much as I could have predicted that partying would be a hobby of yours,” Logan said coolly, his eyes flicking between Virgil and Roman, “I asked you if you had anything more to offer on our hunt – although if you view Patton’s ridiculous party as a priority, I will take note.” 

Roman shot Thomas an exasperated look that had the king choking on another laugh. “First of all, the party is definitely a priority. Secondly, of course I have nothing to offer. If I’d found him, you would all know fairly quickly.” 

“It’s been weeks,” Virgil said to Thomas, still not moving from his crouch. “I doubt he’s in this kingdom now.”

“I do have to agree with Virgil,” Logan said, sounding not-at-all pleased about it. “It’s highly unlikely he’s anywhere near here at this point.” 

“Do you know what is near, though?” Patton interrupted. Roman shared a wince with Logan as they turned towards him. “The party! It’s in a couple of weeks!”

“I somehow still hoped you were joking,” Virgil muttered, his hands going up clutch at his temples. “Even when you suggested it weeks ago and kept on going on about it – I was still optimistic. And now that optimism is going to punish me.”

“A couple of weeks?” Thomas repeated listlessly, looking a bit lost for a moment. “How – why have you done that? I didn’t realize that you were serious!” 

“Well, Logan and Roman have been so busy with everything, hunting through the kingdom,” Patton said, obviously a hint of nervousness in his voice now. Roman stepped closer to him, slinging an arm around the nervous servant’s shoulders, ignoring the slight twitch of Logan’s eyes in response. Underneath Roman’s arm, though, Patton straightened. “And Thomas has been so focused with learning about the homeless and the kingdom’s treasury with Virgil’s help – I just thought everyone needed to let loose a bit! And it’s nearly harvest, meaning that last year’s harvest is going off and needs to be used… I just thought that it would be nice for all of you to –“

“I think it is a marvellous idea!” Roman declared, placing his hands on his hips. It wasn’t even an act – truly, Roman loved parties. He loved the bustle of people, the hum of music and speech, the thrive of community. Parties were places where he could live for hours. “I haven’t been to a party in weeks, and that is not acceptable.” 

Logan looked almost betrayed as he pinched the bridge of his nose and glared down at Roman. “How have you managed to organize this? And on what budget?” 

Patton waved a hand, that impossible smile still fixed to his face. “The decorations have merely been remodelled from the coronation, and I made a point to invite some of the lesser court people to it – meaning they’ve never seen the decorations anyway. The food, as I said, is about to go off anyway and will be quickly replaced by next harvest – what else is there to say?”

“Nothing except that I’ll go!” Roman cried, drawing himself up and placing his hands on his hips. “What could go wrong?”

*

Roman stayed in the king’s room after Patton and Logan left, the former chattering excitedly to the latter – who still looked remarkably like a man waiting for the chance to commit murder. “Did I hear something right? When Patton said that you’d been using this time to work on the homeless issue?”

Thomas smiled. “Of course. It’s an issue that both you and Virgil feel strongly about, and I’m not my father – I won’t ignore the people in need. What was it you said – we become strong when there are no more weak people?”

“That just sounds like you want to exterminate all of the weak ones,” Virgil muttered. Roman found himself captivated as he lightly jumped from his perch and slunk over to where his bed was in the corner, picking up a random book on the way. Roman didn’t miss the way that Virgil opened the book but made no move to read it, his eyes following Roman’s own movements over the cover.

Roman shrugged in response, despite the fact that he was fairly sure his eyes were shining. “I’d exterminate you, if that were the case.”

“I’ve told you before, Princey. I don’t need a sword to fight.”

The pillow that Roman threw after that reply still found itself hitting Virgil square in the face – all of the tensions in the room sinking away in the hours that followed, a blur of time that passed in pillow fights and dozing in a bed and building forts. 

All Roman knew was that he was happy.

Especially when Virgil smiled.


	10. 4 Months and 19 Days until Burning

The party was thrumming with life, and Roman revelled in it.

He hadn’t been lying – the lights, the people, the colours – he loved it all. He adored the freedom of conversation, the idea that he could slip on masks between talking to different guests and have them be none the wiser. The thrill of being simply whomever he so desired was something that he’d been chasing for a while. 

“This is honestly one of the greatest ideas that you’ve ever had,” he told Patton, the latter beaming as he eyed one of the many platters of tall glasses making their way around the colossal room. “Second only to the pancake eating contest that we held a couple of years ago.”

“I just thought that all of you needed a break,” Patton replied, leaning in to enable Roman to hear without him yelling. “I’m just glad that I got to join in!”

Roman beamed at him, the wideness of his gesture probably somewhat exaggerated by the number of glasses he’d sipped from. He hadn’t wanted to, at first – something about duty and maintaining a respectable image whispering in his ear that he may want to remain sober. But the sheer amount of tension that he’d been dealing with the past few weeks had taken over, and then he’d been reaching for one of the tall glasses without his conscience feeling too awful. 

He sipped the drink, allowing his eyes to wander as he did so. Near to his left, Logan was overlooking the happenings, the way that he was scowling enough of an indicator that he was not particularly enjoying himself. And Virgil was at his side – wearing a matching expression. 

Maybe it was the drink that caused Roman to pause and speculate over him. Virgil’s face had changed so much from the days when they’d been twelve – it had lost the roundness of childhood and gained angles, jutting from his jaw and cheekbones. The shadows underneath his eyes, however, were much the same. If anything, they were more pronounced than before – and the dark fringe dangling in his eyes made it all the more obvious. 

Patton, however, seemed very similar to when Roman had met him – back when they’d been seventeen and bickering in a courtyard. He’d become taller, but perhaps it was the childishness that was enthused with his personality that ensured he would always seem young to Roman. 

“I don’t understand how this cacophony of noise could possibly be enjoyed,” a voice said over Roman’s shoulder, distracting him from the image of Patton grabbing another drink from a platter and downing it. 

Roman shook his head as he briefly contemplated how a drunk Patton would function before turning to a displeased-looking Logan. “You’re supposed to dance,” he told Logan, holding up both hands in a dramatic shrug. “Dancing means getting to touch the one that you like. That means you enjoy yourself.” 

Logan rolled his eyes. “I feel that talking to your significant other is enjoyable enough – which cannot be done in the middle of a mess of noise.” 

“On the contrary,” Roman grinned. “If you do want to talk to them, you have to lean closer in order to get them to hear you, which means –“ 

He faltered as he realized what he was saying, and how he was leaning back so that his shoulder was lightly resting on Logan’s chest. Logan’s dark eyes flared as he also caught onto the contact, before both males straightened up and dusted themselves off with a lot of throat clearing. “Point is,” Roman stubbornly continued, brushing a tiny bit of dust from his shoulder, “there are plenty of ways to have fun in this environment.”

“Doubtful,” a sly voice said, although Roman didn’t jump in surprise – he’d known that Virgil had been sniggering behind a curtain for the past twenty seconds. “Is there really any way to have fun when you’re being surrounded on all sides, with no escape in sight?”

“If I were surrounded by something by a party, I wouldn’t bother looking for an escape,” Roman said. “It’s like telling Logan to look for an exit from the library – as long as he’s surrounded by books, what does he mind?”

“One cannot actually survive on mere books –“ Logan started to protest before Patton suddenly swung into the conversation, laughing at something that had probably been said over an hour ago and grabbing Logan’s forearm for support.

“Have fun with that,” Roman winked, giving Logan a meaningful look at the way his hand was suddenly caught onto by Patton as he strutted away, waggling his eyebrows at Virgil in such a way that he practically felt the other male snort and sink back into the shadows. He slowly meandered his way through the party, stopping to either drink or talk – all too often, both. 

It was no surprise when suddenly, he found himself staggering up some stairs a few hours later, tiredness beginning to creep into his bones as the alcohol no longer coursed through his blood. Roman fell against a wall, running his hand through the damp hair in an effort to get the strands away from his eyes. 

He opened his eyes to the still-slightly blurry vision of him being on a viewing balcony – one that oversaw the main hall that he’d just left for a drunken stroll. But instead of leering over at the view of well-respected people acting however they did whilst under the influence of wine, his gaze went straight to the man leaning on the opposite wall, his arms crossed and foot tapping a rhythm that went completely against the booming of the music below. 

Roman wouldn’t normally be scared if there were a man opposite him, and they were alone together in a private booth. If anything, he would have glowed at the opportunity and immediately puffed out his chest in an effort to impress them. But those yellow eyes shot straight through his – ‘happy’ – state and stunned him for a moment. 

“Finally noticed me, have you?” Deceit said, curling his lip and pulling a face. 

“How long have you been there?” Roman asked slowly. “Wait – how long have I been here?”

Deceit raised a groomed eyebrow and allowed his lips to quirk. “You’ve –“

“Does it even matter what you tell me?” Roman asked again, pinching himself and hoping that his words were slow only to him. “You’re just a liar, Logan said. And last time, you told me that I’d never see you again – so unless you’re not really here, you’re a liar, sir.” 

“I confess, I do tend to misinterpret the truth every so often,” Deceit said, his gaze turning more wary than grumpy now that Roman had finally seen him and recognised his existence. “Although I have to say, I thought you would have been a lot happier to see me – especially considering your efforts to find me this past month!”

“Did you think that I missed you?” Roman shrugged, although the gesture made his world spin. “Is that it? Deceit, you have feelings for me? I’m surprised, I thought you’d never fall for me like everyone else in the world – you know?” 

Two realizations hit Roman then – one, that he was still incredibly drunk, no matter what he’d been telling himself merely two – or was it five? – minutes ago. And two – that his world was slowly but surely tilting to one side.

“Oh, this is _not_ tedious at all,” Deceit snapped, and clicked his fingers. 

It was a beat before Roman stumbled across another realization – and he wasn’t happy about it. “You’ve made me _sober_!? Do you realize how much effort it took to get that drunk? I was so happy! Not even seeing your face could have made me sad! And now you’ve taken all that away from me – does it make you feel better? Does seeing me like this make you _happy_?”

Deceit spluttered for the right answer. “No?”

“I will hit you,” Roman growled, a headache already blooming across his brow. “You – oh, you cruel, mean asshole – you’ve taken away my drunken happiness and _given me the hangover for it_?”

“Pain is a window through which you can see everything clearly,” Deceit said, shrugging as he watched Roman lean over the balcony railings in mild agony. Roman groaned, his mouth suddenly dry and his throat cracking under the strain of his breath. As a couple of minutes went by, the cramps of Roman’s stomach forced him to buckle to the ground and the pounding of his head had his eyes clenching shut. Dimly, Roman was aware of Deceit attempting to talk a few more times – but with the dull roaring of blood in his ears, listening coherently was not an option.

The pain began to loosen, like a coil of wire slowly being relaxed. A few moments later, it had eased enough for Roman to squint up at Deceit angrily, confirming his suspicion that Deceit was suddenly finding Roman’s pain not clear enough to see everything. 

Magic was not spoken about in these lands; if people had it, they kept it well hidden. Not for fear of what other people might do to them, but out of fear of what the magic itself might do to them. Magic was a strange power – with its own conscience, if it were strong enough. People ignored it, supressed it. It only had as much power as its user allowed.

The fact that Deceit was using it to merely cure hangover symptoms did not soothe Roman’s feelings of unease about it.

“What are you doing here?” Roman said, his head still spinning enough to ensure he wouldn’t stand. “You know that I’ve been looking for you – why show up in the middle of the castle?” 

“Where else would annoy you as much as this?” Deceit replied. “Right in the middle of your precious defences – it’s my way of reminding you of just how much use you are.” 

“What are you doing here,” Roman repeated, flatly. “You told me that I wouldn’t see you again.” 

“Did I? I can’t remember that.” 

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“But I know that you literally can.”

“Can you prove it?” 

Roman shut up then – but only briefly. “You are rather good at skirting around the questions.”

Deceit nodded, smirking to himself which presented Roman with an ego that may very well rival his own. “I could possibly be here to offer you a deal, Roman.”

“This is the second time you’ve done that – the first ended up in you setting not just one, but three wolves on Thomas. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that they were huge! Why should I be so inclined as to accept the same deal now?” 

“Who decided not to take my deal?” Deceit said, ire flashing in his yellow eyes. “Who’s to say that if you had taken that deal, I wouldn’t have set those wolves on our dear King?” 

“So, you’re trying to say that you’re desperate – desperate enough to offer me a second deal. What are your terms this time?” Roman tried to keep the mocking tone out of his voice, waiting for the vice-like grip of pain to loosen enough for him to possibly tackle Deceit to the ground and shout for the guards. 

Deceit allowed a groomed eyebrow to rise. “If you agree to complete the task I set for you, I can make you a king.” 

Maybe it was the wine, or magic, or Roman’s own impudence – but the world didn’t threaten to collapse as it might have done a few weeks ago. He just stared at Deceit, mouth agape. “If I agree to do something for you, you – you will make me a king.” 

Deceit, spurred on by the flat tone of Roman’s voice, carried on. “This is your last warning – to take the deal. I can make you a king, Roman. I could give you a kingdom, a throne, a crown. But only if you agree to do what I want you to, right now.”

Roman swallowed. He wanted to say yes – wanted it so badly, wanted to feel the weight of a crown and feel the unforgiving lines of a throne that screamed _power_. He’d wanted it from the very first moment, the first memory; it had been his dream and aspiration from the start, when he’d had to fight his way to earn even a blanket, or the best corner of an abandoned street. And here this man was, yellow eyes gleaming, offering it all at his feet. All Roman had to do, he knew, was say that one little word – to agree to his deal.

“Do you not deserve a crown, after all that you’ve been through?” The man murmured, causing a wave of nausea to sweep through Roman – had he not been thinking that? “Do you not deserve to wake up one morning and not have to worry about whether or not you’ll be able to eat?”

“Everyone deserves that,” Roman replied, then tightened as he realized he’d said it aloud. Deceit smiled, as if getting him to talk had been a victory all on its own.

“And with you as king, you could take measures to ensure no one has to worry about getting food every day. You could be the hero, the king that all of the children unknowingly need and dream about – and you know it, too. You could be all of that, if only you say yes.”

Glancing over the balcony, Roman felt his throat tighten. The others were still among the party – he spotted Logan rolling his eyes, even from this distance, and grab Patton’s arm to stop him from joyously joining the dance and potentially slapping someone in the face. Logan looked stone sober – his clothes ridiculously pristine, even in the sweaty surroundings of a late, drunk castle dance. His dark eyes glittered, though, as he murmured what was surely the makings of a lecture to Patton, who merely beamed and hung off his arm. 

Thomas was still talking to the people, graciously accepting offerings of more drinks or food – but Roman could tell that he was getting anxious with the amount of people surrounding him in all directions. Noting that, and how Virgil truly was trying to stay away from Thomas to avoid making his friend even more anxious, Roman made up his mind.

Because it was truly the sight of Virgil trying to hide his dark, slouched frame behind one of the lavish and ridiculously long curtains that told Roman that he didn’t want a castle if it did not contain those people – if it did not contain him. It was the way that Virgil was trying to minimise his increasingly desperate glances towards Thomas, his fear evident for his longest friend, the effort going wasted as Thomas met those glances and the tension between them went taut. 

Roman didn’t know why those two were so deeply connected – how Virgil’s fear could be felt on such a profound and real level as it was by Thomas – but he knew that he wanted them around, so he could find out. So he could help in any way that he could, so he could maybe start to feel something on the soul-deep level that they did. 

“No.”

Deceit merely looked bored as he leaned further back against the shadow of the alcove. “No?”

“No.” Roman knew it was the right decision, it was the right word to say – so why did it taste so foul in his mouth? Why did it feel like he’d just made the mistake of his life, damning everyone to a future that he could have changed? 

“You haven’t disappointed me, if that even bothers you,” Deceit said, without a trace of any other emotion. He could have merely been commenting on the weather and his voice would have been just as suited to that conversation as any other. “But I will tell you right now that you are going to disappoint them – those little friends you care so much for. You’ve chosen your path – a path that will lead them to turn against you – just you wait. Because they will. And when you watch them look at you with disgust, knowing that you had the choice to change it all for the better, I promise that I won’t remind you of this moment. Maybe you’ll hate yourself more than they hate you.” 

Roman snarled – he couldn’t help it. Deceit laughed then, an evil thing sharpened in cruelty. “Goodbye, little prince,” he said, crooning and twisting the title so that it became a thing that would haunt Roman’s dreams. “I won’t see you again.”

“Liar,” Roman spat, his voice echoing within his mind in a tension of mess and fury and confusion. He could only watch as he _slithered_ away, twisting his body around the shadow of the doorframe so that one moment, he was there – and the next, Roman could only detect his footsteps sinking away into the background. 

He ran his fingers through his hair – for once not caring how it looked afterwards, not caring how it fell into his eyes or how it was slightly dampened from sweat. He realized that he was trembling – that his fingers were shaking to such an extent that he had to admit it looked pathetic. “Roman?”

He whirled, staggering away from the wave of disgust that hearing his name caused to shatter through him. The small of his back hit the bannister and he could hear the noise of the party again – he hadn’t realized that it had gone mute. Virgil’s pale, worried face swam into view – and for the first time, Roman hated that face. Hated that whatever Deceit was about to do, it would cause that mouth to sneer and those eyes to glare in utter fury. “Hey,” Virgil said, his voice taking on a soothing tone. Soothing, as if Roman were nothing but an immature child needing comfort-

“I’m fine,” Roman said, choking the words out, staring at the floor so that Virgil couldn’t read the panic that was surely in his eyes. “I’m fine – just came up here for some air, needed to get away.”

“Roman – avoiding a party? This does stray from the expected result of the evening,” another voice commented, and Roman had to take a breath before chanting that strangling either of the two would be bad. 

“Not now, Logan,” Virgil quietly said, and something in his face made Logan run an apprehensive eye down Roman. Roman held his gaze for a mere moment, before dragging his own stare to the floor. It was better than looking at another face that would soon turn to hatred.

“Hey,” Virgil said now, turning back to Roman, his voice soft. Roman looked up – just in time to see Logan’s back as he turned away, looking worriedly over his shoulder at Virgil. Virgil was holding out his hand, open and palm facing upwards – again. Roman had the briefest whisper of a memory – of a boy sitting in a swamp, dirty and bedraggled, and another boy holding out his hand towards him.

But Roman shoved that memory away – he didn’t want it in his mind, so shaking from fury and fear. “I’m fine. I’ve told you. I’m fine.”

“You will be,” Virgil agreed, his voice soft – but the furthest thing from weak.

“You don’t understand,” Roman insisted, holding up his own hands in something of a yielding. “I’m really okay.” 

Virgil merely held his hand out further, and Roman knew in that moment that he could hurt him. Could walk right past him and go to find Logan, as if that outstretched hand meant nothing to him at all.

Everyone had that power – the power to hurt the ones near and close. What made a person truly good or bad was how they treated that power. 

So Roman grabbed his hand with the desperation of a drowning man – but Virgil did not flinch back, as he had done with so numerous other touches. He weathered the storm that had thrown Roman overboard; he was strong, unbreaking, all the things that Roman wanted for himself.

He was Virgil, and Roman wanted _him_.

He regretted the thought the moment it surfaced; neither he nor Virgil were ready for it yet. So, he forbade his eyes from dipping to Virgil’s lips, set into a tight line of worry – worry for him. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated. The cool skin against his own palm was something that he clung to – it soothed the fire of fear melded with angst in his blood, provided a tether to focus on the small things. He hated the small flicker of disappointment on Virgil’s face, though – Virgil had obviously thought that offering a small bit of himself, even if it was just a small touch, that Roman would do the same. It wasn’t fair on him, Roman knew, to just take that touch and not give anything in return. But to tell him of Deceit’s threats?

He could almost see it playing out. ‘Why yes, Virgil, do you remember that one guy with yellow eyes that you saved me from, years ago? Well get this – I know he’s evil, but I let him get into the castle accidentally and nearly agreed to participate in one of his surely awful schemes – again! Exact same thing as last time! And arguably even worse, I let him go yet again so that he can further taunt us. Want to kiss?’

Instead, Roman shook his head and walked away, dropping Virgil’s hand and leaving him there on the balcony as he stumbled down the corridor, trying not to crumble from the pain in his stomach and the guilt in his head.

“Pain is a window through which you can see everything clearly,” Roman muttered, glancing over his shoulder. He caught Virgil’s eye for a heartbeat before the shadow-eyed male slammed the door to the balcony shut with a brutal kick.

It didn’t stop him seeing Virgil biting his lip as though he wanted to stop himself from crying out.

“If that’s the window, I want to smash it,” Roman muttered, before turning and trying to remember the route to his room whilst dealing with the headache that was again building up, the magic that had been soothing it disappearing like its master.


	11. 4 Months and 18 Days until Burning

“You know, Logan, I really think we should leave them to it,” Virgil’s voice stated, sounding all too-happy about Roman’s miserable state of existence. 

“As much as I believe this outcome was expected from both of their combined drinking, I admit that it’s advancing towards being rather cumbersome. They’ll only get more annoying if we abandon them now.” 

Roman turned onto his side, ignoring the bursts of pain throughout his body in response to the movement. “Leave us to die in peace, sadists,” he groaned, clenching his eyes shut. Roman didn’t have a fantastic recollection from the previous night – only that he’d stumbled to his bedroom and passed swiftly out. But he was dimly aware that Patton was on his left, curled into a warm ball between his own body and the wall. 

“See, he even asked us to go,” Virgil’s voice continued, almost becoming the physical representation of sandpaper. “Logan, come on, we’ve got more important things to be doing.”

“I don’t think that we do,” Logan corrected, and Roman got the vague sense that he was bending over both him and Patton in a very lecturer-like way. 

“Anything is better than babysitting duty,” Virgil sniped back.

Roman threw a pillow in the vague direction of his voice before slowly opening his eyes to see the state of the situation. Virgil was perched on Roman’s make-shift desk just opposite the bed, clad in similar dark leathers to his normal attire – but they were still different. Roman’s eyes didn’t miss the fact that Virgil was clenching the hem of his shirt tightly enough between his fingers but decided not to press the issue. Although he couldn’t remember much from the previous evening, it would take much longer to forget about Virgil’s face after Roman had rejected him.

Logan, meanwhile, was indeed looming over Roman with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose as he coolly raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?” Roman asked, hoping that his tone had come across sarcastic – but was foiled when his voice cracked. 

“Unbelievable,” Virgil commented, hopping down from the desk and handing him a glass of water. Roman glared at him before pulling a face and sipping from it, promising himself vengeance once his body had stopped impersonating a desert. “You’d think you two had never drunk before.” 

Roman felt the male at his back awaken a mere moment before Patton sat up, wearing a smile that almost made Roman feel better. “If you even say the words ‘good morning’, I will lose it,” Roman said, burrowing his head into a blanket – his pillow was across the room after he’d lobbed it at Virgil and missed by an impressive amount. 

Patton’s brow wrinkled a second before he brightened again. “Isn’t the day waking up to be splendid!” 

“This is a crime,” hissed Roman. “You drunk far more than I did – you’d better be suffering from an awful hangover right now.”

Patton shrugged jauntily, rubbing his eyes as he smiled sleepily at Logan – the taller male pursing his lips in turn. “Dare I ask why you two ended up in the same bed?”

Roman lifted his head and snorted, before falling back down into the blanket. He felt Patton’s body stiffen for a moment, though, before the male fell back into comfortable drowsiness. “I couldn’t be bothered to go all the way back to my own room, and Roman’s was closer.”

Logan didn’t look convinced, and he shared a sly look with Virgil before relaxing his shoulders just a bit. Roman decided that whilst seeing the hints of jealousy within Logan was infinitely amusing, he knew very well how poisonous jealousy could be. He sat up, making sure that he groaned dramatically the entire way. “You don’t have to worry,” he told Logan, stretching his limbs. “The brat collapsed onto the floor of my room the moment that he entered, straight away. I was already struggling with my own problems, so I couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than drag him into bed and fall asleep myself.”

Patton pouted. “I didn’t mean to collapse – I was actually hoping to shave off one of your eyebrows as a prank.” Virgil choked, and Patton sent a horrifyingly innocent smile at Roman. “Don’t look at me like that – it seemed like a good idea at the time! You can’t blame me for drunk-Patton’s actions… That guy has a mind of his own.”

There was a beat of silence.

“How long can I go to jail for murdering someone?” Roman asked, narrowing his eyes at Logan. 

“A while,” Logan replied readily. “Although I might be able to sway the jailer to let you go earlier if you take requests –“

“Who are you requesting to be killed first - me or Patton?” Virgil asked, raising a hand and glaring at Roman through his fringe. Logan turned, and though Roman couldn’t see the exact look he was giving Virgil, he could make a very good guess from the way that Virgil sneered in response.

“Why would you say ‘first’?” Patton quipped, raising a hand. 

Virgil gave Patton a pitying look. “Logan’s obviously going to have both of us killed – but I’m more interested in which of us he’ll go for first.” 

“I’d normally be offended if it weren’t me he had killed first,” Roman admitted, “but since I’m the one doing the killing, I’m out of the running.” 

“Maybe conversations like these is why we can’t have nice things.” Thomas’ head appeared in the slit between the door and the wall, revealing a mess of hair and such shadows under his eyes that even Virgil whistled at it. 

“I wasn’t aware the castle had a pet squirrel,” Patton said, climbing messily over Roman to stand up and lean against Logan, who blinked uncertainly at him in response. 

Thomas frowned. “We – don’t have a pet squirrel?” 

“Then why is one asleep on your head?” 

Roman laughed at that – the sound sending a flare of pain through his brain. But he used the newfound energy to heave himself to his feet – which, in hindsight, was not the best idea he’d ever had. Nausea rolled through his gut, forcing him to grab Logan’s arm to steady himself – neither of them looking entirely pleased at the situation. To cover the way that Logan was giving him a look that would explain exactly why Roman would die a slow and painful death, Roman hurried to say something. “Do we have a plan for today? Why are we all here?” 

Virgil huffed a breath, and Roman watched as the boy carefully avoided looking at him – looking as Roman clutched Logan’s other arm. “As in, existentially? This is a dark conversation to have, first thing in the morning.” 

Logan glanced at the window and the light peeking through the threadbare curtains and then pointedly back at Virgil. “It’s nearly midday.”

Virgil sighed. “This is a dark conversation to have, last thing in the morning.” He shot a look at Logan as if daring him to make any more complaints, but the taller male merely inclined his head and pointedly stepped away from Roman – forcing Roman to drop his arm as a balance. 

“Nothing’s ever dark as long as you allow some light,” Patton said, waltzing over to where the window was and throwing the glass hatch open with enough force that Roman winced. 

“As optimistic as you are, Patton, I feel like that may be changed in the next couple of hours,” Thomas said, opening the door wider to reveal his baggy, practice clothes. “Your team of staff have already begun cleaning up – they need you.” 

Patton jumped out of the circle of Logan’s arm and walked out of the room after he threw his jumper around his shoulders, his voice continuing to say things long after he’d disappeared from sight. “Oh shoot! I forgot cleaning was a thing – have a good day, boys, behave, be nice to each other, please don’t kill me first and all that nice stuff!” 

Thomas looked faintly puzzled at that last part, but shook his head as he accepted the fact that perhaps he did not want to know. “Logan, I need you to have a final look at some of the measures I’m going to submit to the ministers in a couple of days, maybe tidy the drafts up –“

“I almost already miss babysitting,” the male said, pushing his glasses further up his nose and gliding out of the door, inclining his head to Thomas as he went by. Roman poked his tongue out as he left, wincing as Virgil gave him a ludicrous look in return.

“Dare I ask about the killing topic, or do I really not want to know?” Thomas tilted his head towards the door, a silent invitation. Roman quickly changed clothes into his practice gear – Virgil and Thomas averting their eyes – and then the three of them were off, walking steadily towards the courtyard. 

“We’re solving the mystery as to which of us Logan would have killed first.” Roman massaged his temples, which was slightly helping to appease the boundless headache reigning in his head.

Thomas winced. “Of course – what a commonplace conversation.” 

“Who would you have killed first? If you had to choose?” Roman opened the door that led to the outside, the bright shafts of sunlight causing more pain to spring up within his eyes as he continued towards the centre. 

“I wouldn’t ever be in a position where I had to choose,” Thomas said. 

Roman nodded, dropping into a stretch and giving Thomas a pointed look. He could have laughed at the grimace that fell into Thomas’s face as the King began his stretches alongside Roman. 

“And it’s not exactly hard to work out the answer, either.” 

Roman looked up just in time to see Virgil’s back as the male shut the door they’d left open, disappearing back into the castle to do whatever he so wished – although with the sharpness of the tone he’d used, Roman could guess that wherever he was, he was not entirely happy. As soon as he was out of sight, though, Thomas let go of a deep breath and adjusted his stretch. 

Roman hurried to appease him. “You know I didn’t mean it like – like a real question, right?” 

“Roman, it’s fine,” Thomas answered. Ordinarily, Roman would have instinctively began pushing, knowing that whenever someone used the ‘fine’ word, it was most definitely not fine. It was _unfine_. But as he snuck a glance at Thomas, now working on his hamstrings, he was surprised to see the shadows under his eyes didn’t look half as bad in the sunlight as they had done in his room. His face looked clear, his jaw in an unworried stance, his skin almost glowing in the midday sun. 

“You look – different.” 

Roman cursed his literacy as Thomas paused in his routine, flashing him a wry smile. “I was up all night talking to various people that hadn’t managed to make it to my coronation – unable to get drunk, stressed up to my ears with making good impressions, feeling like everything was suffocating me. But now it’s just – cleaner.”

“Cleaner?”

“The air is light, there aren’t a million people around. I can feel the wind rather than heat and other people’s breaths, and I can hear sounds that aren’t just deafening music and voices clamouring to be heard.”

Roman began his training routine alongside Thomas, who seemed to be doing more meditation than physical work. “Cleaner sounds good,” Roman said, trying not to seem as though he was at a loss for words. 

But words didn’t apply here – he’d never seen Thomas so simply ambient. Roman ordinarily would have barked at least ten commands by this point, from Thomas’s lack of actual physical exercise to the way that he was acting. Thomas made no move to pick up the pole that Roman was now using to strengthen his core; he simple sat, cross-legged, face turned up to the sky. 

Roman followed his own routine, keeping a wary eye on Thomas – but he slowly got used to the silence. It was rare that Roman allowed silence to take priority over himself yelling orders about the needs of a King to learn how to not die whilst exercising… But it truly seemed a shame to disrupt the thing that Thomas was today.

So that was why, after a while, Roman nearly jumped out of his skin when Thomas broke the silence himself.

“Today, it’s going to be okay.” 

‘Unlike your posture,’ Roman fondly thought, but didn’t dare voice. “You could think that every day, if you wanted.” 

Thomas smiled, though his eyes stayed closed and tilted up towards the sun. “I don’t think I could – I wouldn’t want to, either. Having every day be okay would make this one – less okay.”

“…Okay?”

“Yes. Today is okay.” 

Roman shook his head in true bafflement. He wanted to ask whether Thomas had actually gotten drunk last night, but he knew that the King hadn’t dared. So in the end, he merely shrugged and accepted it. Thomas seemed perfectly happy to just sit there – the lazy ass – and Roman was more than grateful to have the chance to work the hangover off. They simply found solace in each other’s company – that way that they didn’t need words. 

It wasn’t until Roman looked up, using a rag to wipe his face, and instinctively looked around the shadows for Virgil that he noticed something amiss. Thomas, almost as though he felt the shift in Roman’s attention, looked up and smiled – an invitation to break the silence that they’d grown comfortable in. 

Roman swallowed. “Thomas – we’ve never really been alone without Virgil.” 

Thomas stiffened, his face automatically becoming more guarded. His jaw tensed, and Roman watched his brown eyes glance around – probably for the very male that Roman had brought up. “I don’t suppose we have,” Thomas said, slowly – his voice deliberately blank. 

“Come to think of it,” Roman said, fighting to keep any trace of negativity from his voice. The last thing he needed was to make Thomas go on the defensive. “Have you and Virgil ever not been in the same place together?” 

“He doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Thomas said – not answering Roman’s question. “Has it ever been a problem?” 

There was no trace of the small smile from earlier – only the grim and deliberate blankness of his expression that unnerved Roman to the extent that he stuttered on his next few words. “You know – he should know, you should both know that it’s never been a problem in my eyes – it was just something that I observed, you know – you’re being so mellow and using “okay” and I was just wondering if that had anything to do with… With Virgil’s absence?” 

Thomas’ expression cleared – a flash of understanding lifted the darkness of his eyes and drew them back into a curious brown. Roman had always loved the colour of Thomas’s eyes – like honey being illuminated by the sun, like leather being seen in firelight. “I thought you were saying that there was a problem with Virgil being here,” he said, the sigh communicated enough of his relief that it was not the case. “But I can see what you’re saying.”

“You can?”

“Virgil can definitely impact on my mood,” Thomas smiled at Roman’s exaggerated surprised expression. “And maybe I can admit the reason I’m feeling so okay is perhaps because he’s not here.” 

“I never thought you’d say that aloud,” Roman said. “I thought you took after Patton with his optimism, at the best of times.”

Thomas let the joke slide and instead sat down next to Roman, taking a clean rag and running it through his hair. “I don’t have a problem saying it aloud – Virgil knows what he does to me. I’d say the same thing if he were here.” 

“What does Virgil do to you?” Roman watched as Thomas paused to evaluate the question. 

It only lasted a beat of his heart, that pause. 

“Maybe you should ask him that question.” 

Thomas was done; he stood up, dropping the rag he’d used on Roman’s head playfully and turning without a wave. Roman watched him walk steadily to the door, closing it behind him without a single look back. 

The click of the door echoed in his ears as fear returned. 

Fear was a weed; it seeded itself into his heart brutally, efficiently. Without even realizing its growth until it was too late, Roman found himself feeling it flower into a bloom with petals of ice and leaves of poison. 

It wasn’t what Thomas had said – not at all…Although Roman couldn’t deny that his heart had tightened at the implications. Perhaps he’d read the pair wrong for years – they’d always shared a room, neither of them had shared any interest for a romantic partner, and both sought contact with the other regularly. But still, it wasn’t even considering the possibility that Thomas and Virgil were together that had seeded such fear in Roman’s mind. It was the fact that Thomas had left him alone, sitting alone in an abandoned corner of the courtyard, with no one else to know where he’d last been if something were to happen. 

If someone were to come and talk to him and offer him choices that would make him even think about betraying his friends for a moment, he’d have no one to help him. 

If someone were to now exact vengeance on Roman, on his friends, on his kingdom – nobody would know about it. Roman doubted whether people would even care about the nobody knight from nowhere – no one would think twice if he were to be wiped off the map, to be killed by giant wolves-

“Roman.” 

It was instinct to go for the sword that he’d left propped up on the bench beside him, the flower in his chest crooning as ice spread to his fingertips. It was instinct that had his mind go utterly, ruthlessly silent. 

His mind was a steel trap – and he’d spent years honing his body so that it could follow every command that his mind gave to it. 

Roman was slashing the sword through the air in the next moment – not wasting a breath. It was the aura that felt wrong – the aura of foreboding that whispered down his neck, stroked his shoulders with its bony fingers. 

By the time he saw Virgil’s eyes widen in surprise, it was already too late to sway the sword’s path.


	12. 4 Months and 18 Days until Burning

Time, for all of its constancy, seemed to enjoy adjusting its speed as it so desired.

It could make moments fly by on wings of silence – so that memories have faded even before they took form.

And when it was feeling especially cruel, time could make itself lame – drag itself on in the crudest form of torture.

Roman would have thought that, in the moment that his heart shattered at the sight of Virgil’s eyes widening, time would have slowed down. Time was supposed to become like the bogs in the marsh in which he and Virgil had met – slow, viscous, bending things to its own rhythm.

Instead, the world rushed by in a whirl of movement and a sudden clash of sound, and then he was sprawled on the ground.

It took a beat more for him to look up, dazed and terrified to see what he’d done.

And then a beat longer to understand what he was seeing.

Logan was standing before him, his face set into an unforgiving glare as he stared down at Roman – wielding a shield before him, a gouge rendering the simplistic design useless. Roman stared at the scar cleaving the wood – realizing that he’d done that. His sword had gouged a hideous dip into the design – instead of connecting to-

“Virgil,” Roman attempted to say, but it seemed that his lungs weren’t as caught up with his brain, and he floundered for a few seconds. “Where is – is he-“

“Just what,” Logan said, his eyes blazing black fire, “do you think you were doing?”

“Roman,” a small voice sounded – Patton – from behind Logan. “Were you really about to –“

“No, it’s really not what you think,” Roman said, the adrenaline taking over. He almost couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the pounding of his blood. Everything within his was screaming Virgil’s name – he needed Virgil, he needed to see, to touch - “I was just on edge, and he came up behind me and said my name and it sounded so like Deceit’s voice that I just –“ 

“That you just swung the sword at me.” 

That voice both quelled Roman’s panic and ignited it anew. 

Logan stepped slightly to the side at Virgil’s voice, allowing Roman to see exactly how Virgil had escaped from the sure execution of his sword. Virgil was looking up at Roman with a look that Roman could only describe as betrayed – his eyebrows tilted and hung low, his eyes wide and, for the first time, unclouded. 

“Get off of me, Patton.” 

Patton was indeed sprawled on top of Virgil, probably in the act of knocking him down as Logan stepped in with a shield. But at Virgil’s command, Patton merely nodded and climbed quickly off, standing up and offering a hand to the male who stayed down. 

“Virgil – why would I ever want to swing at you?” Roman tried, fruitlessly, to step closer. Every time he inched closer, Logan stepped in again, blocking his way towards Virgil and Patton with his own body. “You know me – you’ve known me since I was twelve. Why would I ever swing a damn sword at you? I was panicked, I was on edge -”

“When normal people are panicked or on edge, they do not go straight for a sword,” Logan hissed.

“Logan,” Patton said, quietly. Logan shut up – albeit unwillingly, as Roman watched his jaw clench in silent rebellion. “Roman, I understand that you’ve been on edge – I truly do, what with everything that’s happened with Deceit and the way that he’s targeting you. But you’ve just nearly killed Virgil because of it – you’ve got to consider how it looks to us, what this obsession is having you do and what it is making you become.” Roman had the good sense to take the words in silence.

But it wasn’t because Patton was talking, or what he was saying that was making Roman silent.

No.

Roman had fallen into a place that he’d never been before – a place where he was silently basking in relief, even as his family was berating him. Virgil was safe – his body untouched, even as the man stayed on the ground. No hint of blood or even a bruise – that pristine, pale skin was unmarred. 

Roman had never felt so thankful.

He almost didn’t hear it as Logan started talking again due to the giddiness than now swept into his limbs. But there was nothing that could have blocked out what, exactly, came out of Logan’s mouth. “I’m relieving you of all duties in the face of this – this serious lack of judgement. Be grateful that I’m not doing more.” 

Logan didn’t say a word more – as if he hadn’t just knocked Roman’s entire world down, as if he hadn’t just destroyed everything Roman had worked for. Roman didn’t dare move as Logan walked up to him – and it blearily occurred to him that he was still sprawled in the dirt. 

Logan held out his hand.

Roman flinched at the sight of Logan’s hand nearing his face, an action that he doubted anyone missed – but no one said anything. In fact, he couldn’t hear any signs that anyone was breathing as Roman mutely unstrapped his ruby sash from the grubby practice clothes and held it for a second longer.

His sash.

His pride and joy.

He wore it with everything, that sash – and yet still put it for washing every single night, so that it gleamed at him just as it had done when Thomas had presented it to him.

Thomas.

Roman shook as he contemplated just how his King would react upon hearing the news – would he laugh, thinking that it was a giant joke? Would he take it in silence and then run to Roman’s side and demand to hear his pathetic reasons? Or would he unsurprised, quietly expecting something would break his knight?

The last option seemed the worst.

He viciously clamped down on those thoughts, clenching his jaw shut lest his lips start wobbling with the weight of the tears building behind his eyes. Logan cleared his throat, extending his hand out further to take his sash.

Perhaps Logan didn’t realize that he was taking away the one mark that Roman truly belonged, that he was accepted, that he wasn’t just anyone. Or perhaps he did – and he just didn’t care.

It was that thought that had Roman not hesitating to hand it over to Logan, whose hand shook as he took it from the fallen knight in front of him. 

He deserved this. 

Perhaps the fact that he hadn’t hesitated to hand his sash over, Roman distantly thought, was because he’d known exactly what he was breaking the moment that he’d raised his sword. 

Logan took a shaky breath in as he neatly folded the sash into his arms and turned, obviously signalling to the two behind him with some kind of facial expression. 

Virgil finally stood up, not bothering to brush himself off. The shock that had lined his features now fell away – his face was beautifully blank, except from the hints of purple that Roman saw lining his eyes. Even as Logan gently started to lead the way back to the castle, Virgil’s fingers were never still – the way that his fingers clenched and unclenched and twisted was the only sign that Roman could detect to tell of his anguish. 

Patton stayed behind, not bothering to answer Logan’s worried glance back for him. Roman wearily looked him up and down, spotting the baggy clothes and the wooden sword that now seemed to mock him – it seemed that the trio had come to help Roman and Thomas in their practice routine, as they once had. 

That’s why they’d been there. That’s why Logan had already been bearing a shield.

They’d come to join him in training – to stop him from being alone.

“Patton,” Roman gasped, his throat impossibly tight. “You should get out of here; Logan’s right, I’m dangerous.”

“Why did you do it, really?”

Roman stopped breathing at that question, and he levelled Patton’s gaze with a long look. “I don’t understand – I’ve told you why I did it. I could have sworn that I felt Deceit here – I felt the same aura that I did whenever I’ve been with him. It was stupid and I regret it, but there was no other reason –“

“You recognised Deceit’s presence? You didn’t want to actually stab Virgil?” 

Roman made a noise of disgust and found himself on his own feet. “Patton – are you trying to insult me, seriously?”

Patton stayed silent. 

And Roman understood.

“Tell me,” he said, looking up at the one person that had remained through his eyebrows. “Tell me – where is Patton?”

Patton smiled, and it was a terrible thing. “If I had to take a guess, I’d think he was frantically cleaning in the Ballroom with all of his other peasant friends.” 

Roman didn’t bother looking around for help; he knew none would come for him now. “I knew I felt it – I felt you.” 

“How romantic,” Patton sneered. “Perhaps it is you that has fallen for me, Sir Roman – ah. It seems that I cannot call you even that anymore. Would you like me to call you another name? How does ‘peasant’ sound? Or perhaps, ‘weakling’?”

“Stop wearing his face,” Roman growled. He couldn’t help the rage that surrounded him like a cloak now – didn’t want to, either. He was glad for the anger that sang in his blood, that tightened his muscles. It had stopped the unsteady nothingness that had kept him prisoner for mere minutes. “Take it off.”

“My, you have gotten brazen,” Patton tutted. He pursed his lips – the movement so Patton-like that Roman nearly roared at him right then and there. “Whatever would your many lovers say?”

“Take it off.”

“Maybe if you ask me nicely, I’ll think about taking this hideous form off. Believe me, it doesn’t bring me any joy to have this face instead of my own.” 

Roman couldn’t stop his voice from shifting to hysteria, now. It rose and fell like a bird unsteady in its own flight. “Take it off! _Take it off!_ ” 

Patton winked, and for a heartbeat, Deceit’s natural yellow eyes replaced the light brown that he’d just copied. “Careful,” he crooned. “Logan will undoubtedly be coming back soon to check up on the rather childish thing he’s set his heart on; whatever will he say with you threatening Patton to ‘take it off’? It’s a rather innuendo-filled plead, isn’t it?”

Roman’s distraught voice caught something inside his own chest, and the knight broke entirely. “Please,” he said, tears thickening his voice into something more primal – and infinitely less guarded. It was with a child’s voice that he pleaded with Deceit. “Please take it off.”

Deceit’s eyes swam with amusement, and then Patton’s face just fell away to reveal the more structured, the more angular face with hooded eyes and a strong jaw. As Deceit, in his own true form once again, began to circle Roman with the stalk of a predator. It was a victory, Roman realized, that made the man circling him ‘tick’, as Logan had once mused. It was the way that he took such pleasure from watching Roman cry as if he were nothing but a child, watching Roman’s pride fall and shatter to pieces in front of him. 

And Roman just let him.

He was just so tired.

He had been tired in his soul from the moment that Virgil had been attacked, the wound in the shadow-eyed one’s side spearing a mirror wound into Roman’s own heart. He had been tired as he sought Deceit, tired as he pretended to every single person – including himself – that he was utterly fine. 

And he was not fine.

He was just so tired.

And Deceit, still circling him like a vulture, damn well knew it.

“I do hate to be predictable,” he said, watching as Roman lifted his eyes to meet his, “but I did say that I told you so. I told you that their faces would turn to disgust – in fact, you should be thanking me since I kindly spared you from seeing both Patton and Thomas. Imagine seeing their faces as they realized what you did.”

Roman sobbed harder.

He knew he should stop listening – but what good would that do? He would just stand there, empty and hurting, until Deceit decided that he was dull enough to warrant the wolves. Perhaps it wouldn’t take long for him to die, if he just stayed still. Staying still wasn’t so very hard. It wasn’t as though he had a weapon-

A break shattered through the wet terror that was drowning his mind.

His sword.

Logan hadn’t taken his sword; it still lay there, a few meters away from him. And whilst a wave of nausea rose at the thought of touching it again, wielding the thing that he’d nearly used to kill Virgil, he would stand it. He could grab it easily and run Deceit through – or his wolves, whichever came at him first. He owed it to Virgil.

And that, more than anything, was what was important to Roman right at this moment.

“Whatever you’re thinking at this moment,” Deceit said, stopping his pacing somewhere to Roman’s left, “I’d advise against it. This was your fault – you said no to the deal. And whilst I might have failed to destroy your reputation the first time, I made my attempts better. This time, it’s hopelessly crushed. You do not want to oppose me any further.”

“What more,” Roman whispered, irregular gasps ruining all literacy that he once possessed, “could you do to me? I have _nothing_ left. You can ruin me no more than you just did – I have lost my home, my family, my place. I am _nothing_ ,” his voice broke. “I am _nothing_ without those things.”

“And what if I offered you a deal where you get them back?” 

Roman couldn’t see straight as he blindly dived for his sword and roared through his tears as he swung it towards the man who still thought, after all of this time, that he could just _get_ Roman after all he had done. That he could get Roman to agree to anything that he said.

No.

As Deceit vanished from thin air to appear a few feet away, his yellow eyes frozen in shock, Roman didn’t bother to wipe away the tears on his face as he pointed his sword towards him and _snarled_.

He didn’t know why Deceit wanted him so badly.

Why he needed him to agree to this deal to such an extent that he’d be this invested in wrecking everything that Roman ever was or had been.

But that snarl resonated through his bones, and Deceit’s already pallid face paled further. And as that snarl echoed through the very foundations of who Roman was and what he’d grown to be, Roman swore an oath to himself.

He’d never again allow the people he loved with his broken heart to be hurt because of him. He’d never again be in the position to even think about it.

And with that, Roman left Deceit standing alone, terrified of the war Roman had declared through his snarl. He left him standing in that courtyard as he just turned and walked out of the castle, with nothing but a sword and a promise sworn in his heart.

Never again intending to return.


	13. 1 Month and 20 Days until Burning

The aim was, of course, to get so drunk that he’d forget his own name.

That was his only goal now, day in and day out, in the darkening evenings. He hadn’t bothered to count them – the passing of the days – simply because every single one of them felt like forever. All he knew that during his first couple of forevers, he’d wondered about how people did it. How people lived through each day without a goal, without a purpose, and have the eternal blankness of life not crush them. 

Now, though, he had stopped caring.

Yes.

All he cared about was the feel of the mug in his hand, and the prettiness of whomever he was charming. 

“What’s your name, then, darling?” 

The question nearly made him slump into the man asking, his ale nearly spilling out of his tilting mug. He cursed; why were people so enamoured with knowing a name? Why did people love knowing a stupid word? 

But the man was pretty enough – dark hair, dark and shadowed eyes. His name was pretty, too – Terrence. Terrence was exactly the type that he searched for each night – and they, if the slurring of their words were anything to go by, were just as drunk as he was. “My name is whatever you want it to be,” he told Terrence, his eyes dipping to the man’s lips. “My name can be Wind or Rain or Dust, whatever takes your fancy.”

Those gorgeous dark eyes sparkled. “You don’t seem like the type to like riddles.”

He had the sense to be vaguely insulted. “Do I not?”

Terrence shook his head and gestured to the ale he was clutching in his hand. “Would you like another one, Ren?”

“Ren,” he repeated, feeling the word on his tongue. It wasn’t the worst name he’d ever heard – no, he knew exactly which name would take that place – and he liked it well enough. Ren. Tonight, he could indeed be Ren. Tomorrow he could be an Edward or a Finn – but tonight was not tomorrow. Now was what mattered.

Thinking about the future hurt – was pointless, anyway. But even so, it was better than thinking about the past. Infinitely better.

“I like it,” Ren said, and made sure his smile curved at the edges in the way that he’d learned people liked. He’d gotten good at charming people – enough so that they’d buy him the drinks he desperately needed, if he was going to forget his own name. He had no money to buy his own, anyway.

He had nothing.

Ren scowled at the sharp, aching sting that the words brought. _Nothing_. He definitely hadn’t had enough to drink if thinking that simple little world still hurt like it did. 

The pub was thriving with vivacious life – the kind that he once would have loved, would have lived for. Now, though, he scanned the visitors, glancing for anyone suspicious, marking those who he’d marked before and those that were new. The new ones could easily be charmed into buying him a drink and making him forget about his own name for a few hours.

Terrence reappeared in front of him, and it was an effort not to flinch away from him as his unfamiliar hand softly gripped Ren’s chin and tilted his head upwards. “Scowling doesn’t look good on you,” the man murmured, before leaning over him and kissing him.

The kiss tasted of cheap alcohol – a taste that Ren was now well used to. He calmed the part of him that panicked at the utter surrender of his own body, that fumed at the way he was just getting by on beer that was bought from his flirting and the occasional kiss.

Ren hadn’t yet gone further than that– than just kisses. 

He’d been kissed by more people in the past few forevers than he ever had in his entire life – but he’d never made that move on someone else. The people buying him drinks had to make that move; he had little interest in sharing the shattered remains of his heart. No, the drinks that they bought him were much more pleasurable to the kisses that they gave him sometimes instead.

Not that Terrence wasn’t a good kisser. Ren would probably admit, later, that the feeling of his mouth moving against his own was rather nice – it did not take at all much imagination, if he closed his eyes, to replace Terrence’s existence with that of another man. 

A lighter skinned, thinner and grumpier man.

Ren didn’t know exactly where he was; he’d wandered around for a while, lost in his own mind. But he knew that this was probably the furthest that he’d ever been from the man whose face haunted him. 

Good.

He’d nearly stabbed the one he cared for; he deserved to punish himself by longing for those who were too far away from his reach.

“Let’s go?” 

Terrence had withdrawn his lips a few inches, his dark eyes searching Ren’s own. Ren nodded, silently – he should have known not to start thinking about the ones he’d left behind. Whenever he did, the walls began to creep closer, the people started to loom taller, and he started to panic more than usual. 

A breath of fresh air would be exactly what he needed – and after that, the mug of ale that Terrence owed him for that kiss. Maybe two.

It wasn’t until Terrence actually grabbed Ren’s hand once they pushed the door to the pub closed and he took his first breath of clean air that he realized what a mistake he’d made – that Terrence wasn’t taking him out for mere air. 

He hadn’t realized how late it was – how empty the streets would be. 

How alone he was, even with the man beside him holding his hand. As if noticing Ren’s attention, Terrence smiled crookedly and hooked his arms around Ren’s neck, drawing their lips together again. 

Before Ren had the chance to break away from the cage of another man’s lips, a voice spoke out from the darkened street ahead of them. 

“I think _not_ ,” someone distantly snarled, and Ren squinted as Terrence was suddenly pulled away from him. “Hands off him.”

Ren rubbed his hands into his eyes hard enough that he saw stars, because the scene in front of him simply did not make sense. Terrence was walking off, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly and shooting furtive looks back to where Ren was staggering back into a wall, suddenly needing the support. 

Because in front of him –

“I am not drunk enough to be dreaming of you right now,” Ren said, grabbing his head. “Why does my brain keep doing this? Why do I keep seeing you everywhere?”

Virgil looked remarkably unimpressed as he rolled back his shoulder and punched Ren in the jaw. 

*

Distantly, even as his world rolled onto its sides, he was aware that illusions and dreams could not physically punch the one that dreamt them up. But it just wasn’t possible that Virgil could be here, out of everywhere in the kingdom. He opened his mouth, aiming to ask the perhaps-not-an-illusion for information.

But what instead came out of his mouth was a vague-sounding “can I help you?” 

“Help me?” Virgil laughed, the derisive tone totally toppled by an underlying giddiness. “You absolute pig-headed, ignorant, obstinate, foolish _ass_!”

“That’s decidedly more like it,” Ren said, thankful that the wall was still propping him up. From the throbbing in his jaw, he doubted he could have stayed standing otherwise in his drunken state. “That’s normally what you say.”

Virgil’s mouth tightened, and his fingers knotted together. “You see me often?”

“Only when I get really, really drunk,” Ren said, watching him carefully. He’d never dreamed up someone quite so detailed as this before; he could see every straggled fibre of Virgil’s cloak, every strand of hair that dangled in his eyes. And there was the matter of his jaw in a mess of flaming pain – had he gotten drunker than he had thought? In actuality, had Terrence punched him? “That’s why I try so hard to get drunk, mostly.”

It was then that Virgil’s face softened – he seemed to deflate, as if he’d been holding in a sigh only to just release it. And it was that – paired with the way that Virgil’s lips started to shape a cursed name, a name that he’d long abandoned – that had Ren start to feel afraid. 

“Stop,” he whispered, stopping any words from spilling from Virgil’s lips. “If you don’t get angry with me and call me names again, I’ll have to start believing that you’re really here.” 

Virgil’s mouth quirked up, and Ren’s world – such a precarious, newly born thing – started to falter. “Your illusions of me involve me calling you names?”

“You hiss words at me that I can’t stand to hear, but I listen anyway – you remind me about the things I’ve done that I don’t want to remember, that would break me to think about. But it’s you speaking so I have to listen.” 

“And you want me to do that?” Virgil asked, taking a step closer. 

“If you’re an illusion, then that’s what you will do,” Ren said, not missing the way that Virgil was now only an arm’s length away from him. 

“Do you want me to be an illusion?”

Ren blinked. Twice.

And then he shook his head, blinking now only to stop the tears from falling. “No.”

Then arms were around him, and Virgil was embracing him. “Good,” Virgil whispered. For a beat, Virgil stiffened – but then Ren’s arms circled his waist loosely. As much as Ren wanted to cling to this man as tightly as he could manage, the little sense that he had left reminded him of one simple fact – Virgil did not like to be touched. And the last thing that Ren wanted was to trap him in a hug, like so many men in the past few days had trapped Ren in kisses. 

There had been a reason that he’d been searching for dark-haired strangers in the pubs, and this was it. Kissing some of them had felt nice, Ren couldn’t lie – but Virgil hugging him was a small piece of absolute heaven that Ren would rather die than give up.

“Roman, we have to go.”

Ren froze. 

His heaven broke.

“Roman?” 

Virgil stepped back, and Ren let him. He stared at the floor, forcing his ears to suddenly tune the man out. “Don’t – don’t say that name. I’m – my name is Ren. Ren. Not -”

A tut was all the warning that Ren had before Virgil pushed him against the wall that he’d just abandoned, those quick fingers clutching his collar and forcing Ren to look at Virgil’s face. 

It was then that two mysteries were solved instantly:

One - Virgil’s face was far too terrifying for Ren to have dreamt up, and that could only mean that he was truly here.

Two – Ren and Logan had once wondered why, exactly, a fully-grown Deceit and his fellows had promptly fled from Virgil when he had been twelve years old without a fight. The face that he was making, right now, was why.

It was petrifying – the shadows that normally lay in the angles and juts of Virgil’s face now dominated the entire scene, leaving only the slits of his eyes and the baring of his teeth able to be seen. With the way that he was drawing his lips back into a fearsomely silent growl, Ren wouldn’t have been surprised if those teeth had ended up tearing into his throat. And those eyes – Ren knew them as well as he knew his soul. He knew that they were a dark brown, practically an onyx – but there was a bright purple fire glowing in the very centre, surrounding the pupil. 

Those were not the eyes of Virgil, the one who was adored and adored others, the one who loved to snigger and laugh at dry humour, the one who had somehow combined sarcasm and genuine caring in his tone. 

Those were the eyes of Anxiety – the one who had made fully grown men flee, the one who had hidden himself behind a snarky façade so that people wouldn’t spy what was beneath and run for their lives, the one who was not afraid to walk alone in the marshes because he knew that he was, without doubt, the worst thing out there.

It shouldn’t have thrilled him as much as it did, to see those eyes. 

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Anxiety hissed, pressing Ren deeper into the wall, “start using another name in front of me. I won’t stand for it – I know what fear of a name can do to you, and I will be damned before I let you indulge your stupid cowardly state and lose yourself.” Anxiety’s hands clenched tighter on Ren’s collar, but Ren didn’t have the time to focus on those slender hands, the way that the fingers paled around the knuckles as he squeezed the material tighter. 

Instead, he was too busy feeling the first rush of irritation. 

It was a shock to his senses – a feeling that wasn’t just the dull, numbing ache of trying to focus on only pleasure or forgetting. A feeling that had him clenching his jaw and lifting his chin so that he could glare down at Anxiety, a hint of temper surely working itself into his own brown eyes. Anxiety watched and marked all of this – his face so impossibly close that it was hard for him to miss anything. 

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Ren murmured, quietly. There was no need to yell – not when he could feel every breath that Anxiety took on his chin, on his lips. “You don’t get to tell me how to feel, or what I should or shouldn’t be called.”

“How should you be called, then?” Anxiety said, his voice low. It could have easily been a lover’s sultry question, spoken like that – but Ren normally had a very good instinct for distinguishing between threats of death and statements of love. And Anxiety was perhaps half a sentence away from pulling out a knife and taking aim between Ren’s eyes. “I’ve got several names for you that would fit.” 

Ren attempted to shove against him, shove them both off the damned wall – but Anxiety held fast in his utter wrath. The purple in his eyes only sparked and swelled to eat all of the onyx that had been there just moments before, so that there was only a bright flame of violet when Ren dared to look longer. Those flames were mocking him, and Anxiety’s eyes only flared in grim smugness as Ren tried again, fruitlessly, to push him off. “I don’t want to hear your stupid names for me,” he instead said, one of his hands going to grip Anxiety’s elbow, and the other to keep himself steady on the wall. 

“Oh? So you take requests from everyone except me?” The attack found its mark, and Ren was surprised by how much it hurt. “Ren, was it? Tell me, that boy who I pulled off you, was he the one that gave you that name for tonight? Gave you a name so that he could moan it later?”

That little spark of irritation, apparently, did not need much more than that final line to blow up into a blinding pit of absolute enraged insanity. 

“You absolute piece of _shit_ –“ 

And then he was moving, he was pushing Anxiety off him in a blur of movement. Fury ignited something in his muscles, in the memory of working them so hard that they’d obey his orders no matter what – no matter if the one that they were pushing had suddenly become very, unnaturally heavy to push away. Ren didn’t know if he had to blame the purple ringing through Anxiety’s eyes or the fact that he’d been drinking, but he didn’t care. As long as he had something to blame, he could justify his struggle later.

But then Anxiety’s back was the one up against the wall, and Ren was the one bracing his forearm across the man’s heaving chest. “Coward,” Anxiety gasped, the air being rushed from his lungs as Ren pressed his weight into him. “That’s another name that you can use – why don’t we get that gentleman back here and tell him that one instead?” 

“Be quiet,” Ren snarled, liking that he was now the one bearing down on Anxiety. Those purple flames sputtered for a moment but again flared full force as Anxiety sneered. How the man managed to look so damn derisive whilst literally being pinned was unbelievable. “Are you telling me that you’re here to infuriate me? Because I dream of you doing those things often enough – you really, _really_ did not need to pay a personal visit.” 

“I am here, you rutting fool, because I have been searching for you for exactly three months and twenty eight days only to find that you have abandoned everything that you ever were in favour of becoming the town’s local whore –“

A thud interrupted the sentence that would have followed.

It took Ren a second to realize that Anxiety’s purple fire had utterly gone out as he turned his head to the right to see a fist spasming on the wall, a good space from his face. It took him a few more to feel the pain of several broken knuckles splintering through his arm, breaking through the demented anger and forcing him to grit his teeth and his eyes to water against his will. 

He allowed himself one glance at the hollowness that now filled those onyx eyes and let out a laugh – a horribly flat couple of sounds. He let his hand sag at his side, before pushing away from the wall and stumbling a few steps away. 

He could have carried on stumbling, he knew – could have kept walking, until he couldn’t walk anymore.

But he was tired – so very tired.

And so, he was struck with the single most frustrating choice.

If he shuffled off into the street like his last remaining scraps of pride wanted, Virgil – because it was Virgil, now, with the grieving eyes and the trembling hands – would let him go. Would give up on everything that he’d once been and would accept, somehow, the new thing that he’d become. 

Or he could stay with him.

He hated everything about this choice – because it was a choice much like how breathing was a choice.

Not very choice-like at all. 

He turned his head to look again at Virgil, still leaning against the wall where he’d left him, still staring at the spot where Ren had shattered his hand. Continued to stare at it until, either by his own senses or the magic that had shifted his eyes to purple flame, he turned his head ever so slowly to meet Ren’s gaze. 

“Help me?” Ren whispered. 

Virgil’s mouth tightened as though he was holding something back and was quiet for a few moments. “I know where you can go to get some proper help – the quiet kind.” With that, he kicked off from the wall and began leading the way down the dark street. Ren followed slowly, now clutching his own hand in an attempt to stop the throbbing. 

“I know why you said it,” Ren whispered, after a few minutes of following Virgil’s back. “I know.”

Because he did know. He knew that anger had always been his own anchor – the thing that had always caused him to blow up and take decisions and his rationality with it. Anger had, in the dramatic cases, always changed something in him so dramatically that he came out of a situation slightly different, slightly better. 

Virgil had known it, too. Had known it and had chosen to make him so angry that Ren couldn’t think straight, so that he’d blow up and take the entire fragile personality along with him. 

But even though he knew exactly why Virgil had done it, he was not spectacularly pleased.

Virgil’s steps faltered for just a moment, but it seemed that Ren had timed his sentence perfectly – for Virgil turned into a tidy little cottage at the side of the road, a candlelight still flickering in one of its murky windows. Virgil stepped aside and jerked his head at the door, before turning himself to face the opposite direction. Ren might have felt nervous had he not spotted the trembling of Virgil’s lips and the lone tear that had graced his cheek before he’d hidden it. 

He knocked on the door gently, three times. 

“Who is it?” 

Ren’s heart ached at the sound of the man’s voice on the other side of the door. 

And it was the pain in his splintered fingers, the exhaustion for the verbal sparring that Virgil had put him through in order to wear him down and that voice behind the door that caused him to straighten and answer.

“Roman.”

Thomas practically flung the door off its hinges and glowered at the sight that beheld him – the bloodied mess that was Roman’s hand and the suspicious red of Virgil’s eyes. But he seemed intent on letting Roman suffer for a few more moments as he raised an eyebrow and leaned against the doorway. “Roman what?” 

Roman smiled, though he had no doubt that his lips wobbled severely. “Just Roman.” 

He blinked and then Thomas was throwing his arms around him, dragging him into a hunch so that he could burrow his head onto Thomas’s shoulder. “You are in so much trouble that it isn’t even funny,” Thomas was muttering into the raggedy cotton of Roman’s shirt, although Roman felt his shoulder getting damp from Thomas’s cheek. “Come in; what bloody time do you call this? When Virge told me that he had a hunch about tonight, I called him crazy, and then you had to go and prove him right? I owe Logan some money and Patton a cookie now, and it’s all your fault. In fact, I have half a mind to make you pay it. They bet that Virge would be the one to find you, but I swore that I wasn’t going to stop searching until I found you-“

Thomas continued to talk, heading straight for the small room to the left of the empty fireplace. But before Roman could get a good look at the inside of the foreign cottage, Virgil grabbed his shoulder and swung him bodily around to look at him. 

“We have to talk about you man-handling me,” Roman started to say, but found himself mute as Virgil stood on his tip-toes to wrap his own arms around Roman’s neck and let out a sob into Roman’s chest. 

“Say it again,” Virgil said, his breathing uneven as tears interrupted his usually smooth voice. 

Roman didn’t have to ask for more specifics. “Roman. My name is Roman.” 

Virgil’s body shuddered in relief. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it – didn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t matter if that’s what you’d chosen; it wouldn’t stop me from searching for you. I had to say those awful, dreadful things and you break that entire ‘Ren’ persona after Thomas asks for your damn name? I was trying to make you furious, Princey, and you don’t crack for me, but you crack for Thomas? I’m insulted, and you’re still a bastard –“

“It was because of you,” Roman admitted, his hands not sure where to go – Virgil hadn’t let go yet. The one that was still working found its way to the back of Virgil’s head, fingers tangling in his dark hair. “I would never have come if it hadn’t been for you. I was shattered the moment that I saw you, and you know it – so don’t go saying that I didn’t crack for you.” 

Virgil stiffened and drew back slightly so that Roman could see the tear tracks glittering their way down his face. He looked up, his mouth parting slightly –

“ – and Patton’s extraordinarily devastated that he couldn’t come with us, but since I gave him a promotion, I had to force him to stay at the castle so that Logan doesn’t turn the country into robots in my absence – Virge? Roman?”

Virgil immediately stepped out of Roman’s one working arm and waved Thomas off, heading to the fireplace with his trademark glower. Roman shrugged at Thomas, ignoring the flare of pain that the movement sent searing down his arm. Thomas raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, inclining his head towards the cosy chairs surrounding the fireplace that Virgil now crouched in front of, piling up logs so that the embers could grow again.

Roman and Thomas sat on the largest sofa, the latter clutching a box of healing supplies that the former eyed apprehensively. “Do you even know how to use anything in that?” 

Thomas stuck his tongue out at Roman. “Shut up. You’re still very much in trouble, and you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. You explain, and I’ll figure out how to bandage.”

*

Virgil had moved to nestle by Roman’s legs as Roman had indeed explained, seated on the floor and looking at the flames he’d coaxed suspiciously quickly into being. Thomas had indeed learned how to suitably temporarily bandage hands, though Roman would have preferred a method that had not relied on the ‘trail and error’ viewpoint. 

He couldn’t complain. The scars that would undoubtedly be left would serve as a reminder.

“I just thought that I’d only be hurting everyone if I’d stayed – if Deceit came back and forced me to take part in something that I couldn’t get out of. And I’d just nearly taken Virgil’s head off,” Roman just finished saying, inspecting the thankfully-clean bandage bundle that was his hand. 

Virgil huffed a sigh. “That was how I began to realize what had happened. ‘Patton’ had been far too quick to react in saving me – you would have actually hit him with the sword had he not stepped aside a split second before and put me first. That was how he knocked me down so quickly. You had good instincts; Deceit just knew how to manipulate them better. I didn’t fully realize until the real Patton came sprinting up to Logan and me as we were wondering how to tell Thomas. He had a duster in his hand and asked us if we wanted to go down to the training grounds to surprise you. Logan and I realized at the same time, I think – we both sprinted immediately back towards you, leaving poor Patton in the dust. But you – you’d gone.”

“I ran away,” Roman corrected, feeling the weight in his heart. 

“To protect us,” Thomas countered, spreading himself out on the sofa, his head nearly on Roman’s lap. “I feel like it can be justified.” 

“And choosing different names every night?” Virgil accused, leaning back his head so that he could shoot Roman a faintly amused glare. “That wasn’t just to forget your own miserable state, was it?”

“No,” Roman admitted. “I thought it would be more difficult for Deceit to find me and force me into one of his schemes if I changed myself every night. I wandered for so long and so far that he couldn’t possibly have followed me – I don’t even know where I am right now, so how could Deceit?”

“You’re about a two-day ride to the castle,” Thomas said, turning onto his side. Roman was temporarily struck dumb at the pure orange colour that Thomas’s eyes were as they were actually seen in firelight. 

“Deceit could know,” Virgil said, quietly. “He probably knows already or has known for these past months.” Roman looked down at him, but Virgil seemed intent on merely looking at the flames as his fingers fiddled with a loose strand in his frayed jacket. “He prides himself on knowing most things. He always has.”

“You know him well?” Thomas said, his tone deliberately light. 

Virgil didn’t move – his fingers stilled, momentarily. “Once, I guess you could have said that.” 

Roman didn’t like that at all. He couldn’t help the frown that took control of his face as he glanced nervously around the cottage. “What is his magic? I suspected he had it, but it wasn’t until he’d made me sober and cured the symptoms that I was sure.” 

“He has a name like ‘Deceit’ and you can’t think about what his magic is?” Virgil asked, incredulous. “His magic revolves around the deception of a person’s reality; he could make you see things, could make you feel things that ordinarily you wouldn’t. He didn’t really cure your hangover – he just disguised it.” 

“Hypothetically,” Roman asked, slowly, “could he make me see corridors in the castle that weren’t there before?” 

Thomas blinked at him, but Virgil nodded. “And he could also make ordinary wolves seem huge.” Thomas whistled lowly, moving his head onto Roman’s lap with a definitive sigh. Roman carefully, slowly, placed each of hands on a different man’s head. His bandaged hand carefully threaded itself through Thomas’s messy hair, making it stick up more than it had before. His free hand could easily reach Virgil, and Roman did the same thing – gently stroking both of his friends’ hair. 

Thomas sighed in relief, and his head steadily grew in weight on Roman’s lap until he knew that the King had totally fallen asleep. Virgil stayed quiet, but as time grew longer, Roman could have sworn that his head occasionally dipped closer, as though he didn’t want the touch to stop. 

“I’m sorry for running away,” Roman breathed, not wanting to wake either of the two up – but the way that Virgil was utterly still betrayed the fact that he was very much awake, even before he snorted softly.

“I’m sorry that Deceit wants you to agree to his deal so desperately. He was never the kind to give up.” 

“I’m sorry that I swung a sword at you.”

“I’m sorry for stabbing you in the armpit that one time.”

“Liar.”

Virgil shook with restrained laughter. “You’re right, I’m not sorry about that. You were asking for it.”

“What is this cottage? Is it Thomas’s?” 

“No, it’s actually Patton’s. Turns out it’s his family home, and as soon as he heard that Thomas and I were going to come near here to search for you, he gave us the key. Practically forced it into our hands and said ‘bring him home’ whilst shaking like a leaf.” 

Roman’s mouth went dry. “I miss him. And Logan.”

Virgil hummed, pushing his head back so that Roman could fiddle with the hair that made up his fringe. “You should have seen him after he’d put together what had happened. He just sat in a chair and stared at your sash for hours; I think he was going to come and find you himself.” 

“But Thomas left him in charge, right?” Not that Roman didn’t think that Logan was worthy enough – in fact, he couldn’t have named a better substitute. But something about the fact that Thomas had, temporarily, chosen him over his own kingdom made him suddenly feel warm. 

“Yes. But Thomas – I’ve never seen him like he was, when the three of us burst into his office, Patton in tears and Logan trembling. Never. It took Logan shutting both Patton and me up and explaining it for him to understand. The next minute, he’d packed a bag and was shouting orders at Logan – who was furious, but only because Thomas wouldn’t let him go with us.”

“If I go back with you,” Roman said, ignoring the way that Virgil’s hand splayed in displeasure at the term ‘if’, “you realize that Deceit will probably follow?”

Virgil stood, his hair messed up and his eyes veiled in a layer of pleasure and tiredness. Roman settled himself into the sofa, careful to shift Thomas just enough so that the two of them could sleep easily on the pillows. “You’re worth any trouble Deceit will bring – and we’ll face it. Together. But-”

Roman had made the mistake of letting his head fall back onto the high back of the sofa, and the exhaustion hit him full force, practically forcing his eyes closed. 

Virgil watched as two of the people he adored in this world fell deeper into sleep, the dying firelight his only awake company. He finished his sentence despite his audience starting to snore softly, instead addressing the embers before going to find a bedroom with a nice windowsill. 

“It’s not you that Deceit is following, Roman.”


	14. 1 Month and 18 Days until Burning

“I regret everything about the decision to come back.”

“Shut up.”

“I am considering turning this horse around right this very second.”

“Feel free.”

Roman pouted at the blunt answers that Virgil was giving in that irritating dead voice and winced again as his horse jolted him. He’d been sitting on this horse for hours – as well as the entirety of the day before. He was sore, and that didn’t even begin to cover the extent that he was aching in a very particular area that he did not enjoy hurting. “You’ve been searching for me for weeks,” Roman said, to which Virgil huffed a sigh. “Surely you’d at least panic if I actually turned around.”

“Not in the least, Princey.”

The afternoon was growing cold; Roman could feel the tip of his nose steadily turning numb. Thomas was leading his sweet-tempered horse a few meters ahead, a dark cloak obscuring his face into shadow – it wouldn’t do for him to be recognised here. He hadn’t spoken too much during the ride, seeming to prefer the silence. At least, he’d only scowled a few times whenever Virgil and Roman’s bickering got to him. 

Roman was thankful for the bickering, though. It distracted him from the ever-growing thirst that lingered at the bottom of his throat. 

He’d drunk more water in the past day than he’d drunk in a week back at the castle, trying to distract himself from the cravings that shook his fingers and made him look twice at the taverns that their trio passed on the way back home. Whether Virgil or Thomas noticed the way that his lips were cracked, or that his eyes grew frantic when they travelled through a road that smelled of wine, Roman didn’t know. 

It was entirely too stupid – for him to have come this far and be thwarted by a thirst for a drink. Theoretically, he should have been giddy; should have been too excited to get home to Patton and Logan, should have been asking Thomas if they could at least canter for a while. But all he was thinking about was whether the kitchen staff would take pity on him and hand over a bottle. 

It was echoed throughout his body with every movement that his horse made, with every breeze that steadily froze his fingers.

_Drink._

He barely noticed the sun setting or the sky being transformed into a canvas of orange and pink.

_Drink._

He nearly continued riding his horse past Thomas when the King stopped, glancing to Virgil and sighing. “Let’s stop here for the night – there aren’t any inns nearby, anyway.”

_Drink._

He did notice, though, when Virgil kicked him sharply in the shins. “You look like hell.” Roman tugged on the reigns of his horse a little too sharply, the sudden pain breaking through his sluggish state. The horse threw its head back, making a shrill sound that had the hairs on the back of Roman’s neck stand up straight – not at all helped by the way that Virgil hissed and leaned over from his own stallion to place his hand on the other horse’s neck. “What are you doing, you idiot? Trying to make your horse hate you?”

“Not – of course not!” Roman said, drawing his lips back in a makeshift sneer. He dismounted from said horse, not at all gracefully. His legs weren’t used to being moved, and his body ached all over. It wasn’t at all surprising to him to find the road slowly rising to meet his face –

“Roman,” Thomas warned, stepping neatly in to grab at Roman’s shoulders, heaving him closer to Thomas’ body. Roman blinked, his arm being thrown around Thomas’ shoulders without him deliberately moving it. “You’ve lost weight,” Thomas noted, although he was still staggering under their combined weights as he heaved Roman’s unwilling body towards the side of the road. 

“Not important,” Roman grunted as Thomas propped him down, his back to a particularly thick oak trunk. Virgil had taken the reigns of all three horses and had led them silently to the opposite side of the road, where he was tying them loosely to one of the thinner trees so that they could easily reach the small, winding stream around the roots. 

Thomas gave Roman a scanning look which he was too tired to respond to and knelt on the ground beside him to start building a fire. “You do look like hell,” Thomas said, keeping his eyes down on his task. “Virgil may be many things, but he’s not a liar.”

“Glowing praise there,” Virgil’s snarky voice replied, the owner of which settling next to the horses. 

Thomas ignored him and merely frowned as his flint and steel refused to light the meagre twigs on fire. “I at least thought that if you left, you’d continue to take care of yourself. How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

Roman rolled his eyes, to which Thomas flicked his arm with a glare. “You know the answer,” he answered. “I ate lunch with you today. I imagine it’s been a few hours?”

Virgil merely snarled this time, and Thomas looked inclined to echo the sentiment. “Don’t play smart, it does not suit you.”

Roman gave a displeased look in Virgil’s general direction. “Harsh, Virge.”

Thomas grabbed Roman’s chin and forced him to look at his King, clearly not willing to let this go. “It’s true, though. Before we’d found you, how long had it been since you last ate?”

Trying not to squirm was hard enough – his body simply ached too much to be able to move, to wrench his head away from Thomas’ stubborn fingers. But he carefully kept his eyes on the ground, which he knew was the reason why Thomas’ nails dug in more forcibly into his skin. “I can’t remember. I didn’t take any money with me – which wasn’t the smartest thing to do, in hindsight.”

It was a mark of how furious Thomas and Virgil were that they didn’t even offer a hint of amusement. 

“You –“ 

Roman didn’t notice that Thomas’ hand had fallen away from his face until a few seconds had passed, the silence only broken by a few nickers from the horses. Then, Virgil moved.

He stood from his spot beside the horses and just appeared beside Thomas – so fast that Roman blinked a few times, unsure of whether he’d merely sunk into a stupor or if the incessant thirst had caused him to miss a few seconds. Thomas wordlessly handed the fire-lighting tools to him, falling back to sit in the shadows with his hands clasped in front of him.

Virgil had a fire going in a couple of seconds, before letting go of a breath that Roman was almost entirely certain he’d been holding for a few minutes. 

“I called you a greedy pig when you grabbed at the last apple in my bag at lunch,” Virgil said, his voice blank. “And you just laughed.” 

Roman shrugged, trying not to give away how shocked he was at the turn of pace. “It was funny –“ 

“It was _NOT FUNNY!”_

Virgil had never yelled. 

Never.

He’d raised the volume of his voice so that he could be heard; he had hissed and snarled countless times. But he had never once, in the entirety of time that Roman had known him, yelled. Stunned into silence, Roman immediately glanced at Thomas for support – surely Thomas would be just as shocked as he was?

But Thomas was still staring at the flames, his eyes only just hinting towards the wrath that Roman suspected he was feeling. Roman knew he wouldn’t find the man he’d grown up with in Thomas, now. The King was too busy being angry. 

Virgil took the opportunity of Roman’s silence to stand in front of him, not bothering to kneel or sit so that they could be eye to eye. No. Roman was forced to look up to meet those simmering pools of violet fire. 

“Your eyes –“ he started to say, started to ask – but Virgil stomped his foot to the ground, and the world shook. 

_Shook._ The horses whinnied, the fire flickered as though it were about to go out, and some of the remaining leaves on the trees fell off. Roman felt the ground rumble, as if the earth were laughing at some long-forgotten joke and then tumbled instantly back into sleep. Only stopped as Thomas snapped a curt “Virgil,” the word laced with command. No fear in that command – not an ounce of trepidation, or tension. Roman glanced, once again, to Thomas. 

His theory was immediately confirmed. Thomas was not scared at all – as if he’d seen Virgil like this before. 

But at the sound of his name, Virgil’s eyes winked out and were again replaced with their ordinary colour, although their surroundings were so dark that they truly looked black. “Don’t tell me to stop,” Virgil spoke, his voice that same blank voice that he’d used only moments ago before the shout. 

Thomas didn’t say anything more, but after a few seconds, the razor-sharp tension dulled into nothing. Virgil knelt before Roman, his body taut. And when he spoke, a few seconds later, his voice was even more so. “It – what I said – was not funny. If I had known – or if I had even guessed – that you’d been… That you’d been starving yourself… I would never had said anything. Hell, I would have given you my damn share, if only you’d asked, or if you’d told me – and it wouldn’t have even been like this if I had found you sooner, if I had taken the route that Thomas had told me to – “

Roman would admit quicker than anyone else that he was a little slow to figure most things out. As Virgil was speaking, he knew that he should have been feeling a little flattered, more than a little guilty for making this man feel the guilt that he was. 

But he was slow to figure things out, and all that rose to the surface was anger. 

“Oh no, you don’t,” Roman spat, sitting himself up despite the aches in his body flaring to full force. “You do not get to take blame for my actions – I didn’t take any money with me, I don’t have any money. That is my fault, not anyone else’s – so you can stop your little temper tantrum and grow the hell up.”

“Why didn’t you send the bill for your food back to your account at the castle?”

It was the first time that Thomas had spoken, which was probably a good thing – especially when Virgil’s eyes looked like they were exceptionally close to sparking into that purple fire at any moment. 

“Send the –“ Roman repeated, his anger taking a stumble as a simple confusion took over. “My account?”

Thomas only answered in a clipped, poisonous tone that had even Virgil raising an eyebrow. “Yes. Your account at the castle.”

“I have an account at the castle?”

If Roman hadn’t seen the jaded looks that Virgil and Thomas gave each other at the question, he would have thought that they were messing with him. But he did see them – saw the way that Thomas’s nose flared in disbelief, and the way that Virgil pinched the bridge of his nose as he finally moved from his knees and went to sit beside Thomas.

“You realise that I’ve been paying you for your services for the past twelve years, don’t you, Roman?” 

Roman was glad that he was sitting down. “What?”

“You realise that I pay all of my staff at the castle by depositing money into accounts at the castle, don’t you, Roman? And that you, too, count as staff?”

“You _what_?”

Thomas and Virgil looked at each other – and Roman was glad to see that all traces of anger were slipping from their faces. They’d thought he’d been starving himself willingly – that he hadn’t cared enough to feed himself. And suddenly, their fury made sense. 

Roman started to smile. 

“This isn’t funny, asshole,” Virgil snapped, although his mouth twitched. “Do you care to explain how you didn’t rutting realize you’ve been paid a salary for more than a decade?”

“I was given meals every day, and a bedroom,” Roman sniped back, although the attitude wasn’t real. Steadily, the aches of his body slipped away and were replaced by a simple giddiness. “I thought that even that was just Thomas doing his charity work.”

Thomas choked. “You are, without a trace of a doubt, every inch of the absolute idiot that Logan says you are.”

Virgil ran his eyes – now a merry brown – down Roman and settled on his face. “Even more so.”

“Normally I’d tell you both off, because I am surely an underrated genius,” Roman sighed, putting his face in his hands, “but I must confess that I feel like a right idiot now.”

“Ah, it’s become self-conscious,” Virgil murmured to Thomas. “Surely now is where we turn and run.”

“Good luck trying to get Thomas to run,” Roman remarked, feeling rather free for the first time in a long while. “I’ve been trying to get him to exercise regularly for years.”

Thomas launched into a long list of excuses as to exactly why he found Roman to be utterly useless as a dictator fitness instructor, allowing Roman to sit and think for a few minutes without being laughed at. 

He had an account, and money. He’d built that – he’d worked for it, unknowingly. He could do anything he wanted, as long as there was enough there. Could buy a house, a manor, a small castle. But what he really wanted, more than anything, was –

_Drink._

Now that he was settled and wasn’t too busy being furious or sad or uneasy, the urge resurfaced. He could buy all of the wine or ale that he could ever need, to stop that incessant urge from being there. 

“I suppose Virge and I now have our answer as to why you never moved out,” Thomas was saying, Roman only hearing it because of the change in his voice. Less laughter-filled and more musing. 

“Why would I move out?” Roman asked, trying not to seem like his thoughts were elsewhere – on wine, on ale, on any drink with enough bite to lessen the sharpness of his thoughts –

“You have enough money in your account to afford anything that you want,” Virgil rolled his eyes. “We flattered ourselves that you just stayed because you liked our company too much – but now that you actually know it’s there, I suppose you want to buy yourself a castle, stop being a knight and start being something a little more comfortable?”

Roman didn’t like the sudden question in Thomas’ eyes, or the suspicious way that Virgil was trying to keep smiling. It looked like the effort of both of them to keep casual was hurting them – and Roman wasn’t worried. 

“As if you would survive even three months without me,” he said, smiling at the way that the fire spat a few embers at Thomas. “I mean, I tried to leave, and you raised hell trying to find me. I can hardly just go after that.” 

Thomas flushed a little, and Roman just had to look at him to get Thomas to voice his unspoken thoughts. “At first, you know, I didn’t want to knight you immediately – I thought that you’d just find it another thing binding you to me, and I thought you’d hate it – I thought you’d want to travel, buy yourself some land and work with other people and explore, like we’d explored those marshes. It’s also why I didn’t have you move right into Virge’s and my bedroom with us – I thought you’d want something that was entirely yours, for once. I thought you’d want to own something, anything – which is why I didn’t think you’d like sharing a room with Virge and I.” 

“But you did knight me immediately,” Roman said, and his voice wobbled. 

“I saw you look at me in my coronation clothes like I was worth being crowned and I – I admit it, rather selfishly – decided that I needed you at my side.”

Roman blinked, unsurprised at the unshed tears that were behind his eyelids. “I made a promise to you, and to this court. And this court – you, Virgil, Patton and even Logan – I swore that I’d serve this court to the day that I die – and longer still. There is no future in which I will regret it, that promise. There is no future that I want where I do not hold it dear.”

It was a normal evening in the winter – the air was cold, but that was usual. The fire was pathetically small but merrily continuing its crackling, the amber light playing with the shadows beginning to creep up from the horizon. What was slightly unusual – not that there were any bystanders nearby to witness it – were the three men lying down by that fire, side by side, unabashedly weeping. 

*

It was at the dead of night that it got too much. 

_Drink._

Roman couldn’t lie still – not even when his body was exhausted and sore. He had thought that dropping off to sleep would have been easy in this state – emotionally spent, physically burnt out. But the thirst seemed intent on making him struggle further. 

He sat up, careful not to disturb Thomas. He didn’t know where he was going to go – he knew that there were no inns or taverns near here. There was nowhere that he could go to soothe that tic in his body. But he had to move. 

“Going somewhere, Princey?” 

If he hadn’t been expecting Virgil to destroy all plans that he would have made, he might have jumped – but as it turned out, he’d known that Virgil hardly ever slept when he was out in the open and would probably be watching him the moment that he opened his eyes. 

“Would you believe me if I told you ‘nowhere’?” Had his mouth always been so dry? Had his tongue always felt this awkward within his own mouth?

“Incidentally, yes.” 

Roman cast his gaze around until he found him. Virgil was halfway up a tree, one leg dangling carelessly from the branch as he had curled himself into the joint between branch and trunk. 

“I think I might have become an alcoholic,” Roman whispered. Virgil’s eyes glinted, and that was the only warning that Roman had before the man swung himself down, landing neatly on his feet. 

“That requires you to have symptoms for more than a year, I believe. I’m not an expert,” Virgil said, coolly picking at his nails. “Why? What are you feeling?”

“I feel this thirst,” Roman said, drawing his hands into fists – needing the tightness of his arms to disappear. “I’m on edge, constantly – I keep getting distracted by this recurring want of drink that makes no logical sense. I keep thinking that I need it, that I want it, that without it I will be driven mad. I just can’t get it out of my mind.”

Virgil’s face had gone white. 

“That sounds very similar to – something else,” Thomas said, which did in fact made Roman jump – he hadn’t realized that he was awake. Thomas wasn’t looking at Roman, though – he had fixed a sleepy, worried gaze onto Virgil, holding out a hand to him. 

“It does sound very similar,” Virgil agreed, and before Roman could grab his arm and beg for help, he strode towards Thomas. Roman couldn’t speak – for an entirely different reason – as Virgil knelt before Thomas and pressed his forehead to Thomas’s, his hand curling around Thomas’ head as the two closed their eyes for the briefest of seconds. 

An owl hooted somewhere in the distance, and Virgil’s eyes opened. 

He shot a wry wink to Roman and didn’t hesitate as he untied one of the horses and had it saddled in a matter of seconds. “I’ll meet you at the castle,” he said, not bothering to look back as he cantered into the night. 

“Roman,” Thomas said, his eyes clearer but his body still relaxed by sleep. “He’ll be fine.”

“But I was just –“

“Roman,” Thomas said again, “you will be fine.”

Roman caught his temper flaring again – but then he realized that Thomas was right. The urge that he’d been nursing for days was fading into his blood, and as Roman breathed out, it disappeared altogether. 

“Oh, hell,” Thomas cursed, leaping from his bedroll and frantically reaching across for Roman. 

He didn’t make it in time – the exhaustion that had been disguised by the frantic obsession of drink had returned full force, and Roman fell instantly into a slumber that not even falling onto the gravel of the road could wake.


	15. 1 Month and 17 Days until Burning

“Are you sure that you don’t need a break?”

“I’m fine.”

“You say that, but you quite literally fainted yesterday.”

Roman took a steadying breath in, telling himself that murdering the King would not be particularly beneficial for anyone. Thomas had been fussing for the better part of the day, the moment that Roman had opened his eyes and groaned. He’d had a pounding headache then – but now he had one of a rather different sort. 

One that kept offering breaks at every moment that Roman winced, the horse jolting his sore body far too painfully. 

“Thomas, you know that I just want to go home,” he said, enjoying the low rush of enjoyment of calling that castle his home. “Taking breaks would just mean prolonging that – don’t you want to see just how Logan’s wrecked everything?”

Thomas tutted, slightly speeding his horse up so that he and Roman were level. “He wouldn’t have wrecked everything. Have some faith.” 

“You’re right – he would rather die than have the library destroyed. At least that’s one room that we know has survived.” 

Thomas laughed, startling a few birds into flight from the nearby trees. Roman glanced nervously behind them; though he adored hearing Thomas laugh so freely, the sound was practically a beacon for thieves or bandits on the road. The King had forgone wearing his cloak, too – but he’d thankfully not put on his crown. Roman shuddered to think about what might transpire if thugs had seen that, especially as he’d been out of training for a couple of months and doubted that his stamina had come away unscathed. 

“Can I ask you something?” Roman didn’t blame Thomas for stiffening slightly – the foreboding tone of the question was entirely out of place with the pleasant mood. But Roman couldn’t risk being kind with his questions here – couldn’t afford to stay in the castle without knowing the answers. 

“You can ask me anything.” 

Roman swallowed. “Actually, I may have more than one question.”

Thomas heard the rest of the request – and answered it. “Then it’s lucky that we have a while to the castle, isn’t it?” 

“Virgil’s magic. I know he has it – what is it?” 

Roman watched as Thomas swallowed. Twice. Just when the silence had stretched to beyond a comfortable amount of time and Roman was about to open his mouth to inquire again, Thomas spoke – but it was not the answer to the question that Roman had asked. 

“What gave him away?”

Roman gave Thomas an incredulous look, tilting his head to the side. “Oh, you know, I sensed that his aura was different – and he was acting very unlike what his zodiac horoscope said how he’d act… Or maybe, going out on a limb here, it was the fact _his eyes went bright purple_?” 

Thomas hummed, giving no hint of amusement. “I guess that means it’s alright for me to tell you, then.”

“Excuse me?” 

“People’s magics are very personal to them,” Thomas said, now focusing on the path that was steadily leading uphill. “It’s not exactly polite to be talking about this kind of thing without the person giving permission.”

“Virgil is strong enough to cause a bloody earthquake with merely a stamp on the ground,” Roman said, aware that an incredulous tone had made his voice low and sulky but unwilling to change anything about it. “And you think that isn’t information that you should have given me on the very day I met you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Roman stared hard at Thomas, who merely raised his eyes and glared right back. They kept going that ordinarily, Roman would have given up by now or felt stupid – but there was that infamous stubborn streak that never truly went away. It was what made him sit up and keep his eyes trained on his King’s, Thomas not backing down either. It got to the ridiculous extent that Roman came to realize that whilst he was perhaps known for his stubbornness, Thomas was known for his loyalty. 

Roman let go of a breath that took all of his stubbornness with it. “Why was it not information that I should have known?”

Thomas’ face did not change – his features didn’t swamp with smugness over the fact he’d beaten Roman at a scowling battle, or childishly light up. “If you had known it, you would have run away from us and never come back.” 

“No, I would not have!”

“Yes, you would’ve.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Roman snorted, shaking his head. “There is nothing quite that bad.” 

Thomas bit his lip, and it was as though he was trying not to look at Roman. Roman didn’t understand why until a moment later. “Virgil is that bad.”

Roman felt like the world had been tugged out from beneath him. If he weren’t on a horse, he might have already made a move to pummel Thomas into the ground, to tackle him and insist that he took it back. “How could you say that? This is Virge – he’s been nothing but a brother to you, after all of these years, and you go and say that?” 

“Virgil is _nothing_ like a brother to me.” 

Roman couldn’t think straight – he was numb. He was both not real and real, silently riding his horse along a path that was now becoming quite steep. But if he had even an inch of magic in his veins, he knew, it would have erupted from him within that moment. It would have burned the world down in flames and smoke. 

It was a good thing that he hadn’t a drop of magic at his command. 

It took a while for him to remember how to speak. “You never answered my question.” If Thomas was shocked by the voice of ice with which Roman was speaking, he did not show it. Roman’s heart broke – Thomas had always been the most emotional one, the one who laughed until he choked and then continued laughing, the one who cried whether he was angry or happy or sad. He was the one that shone so completely that it shattered the foundations of what the King was to see him so blank. 

“I need you to listen completely and utterly to me without interrupting. If I even hear one word before I’ve finished, I will refuse to continue on. And if you decide that, as Virgil’s friend, you can’t bear to hear the entire truth, then you should remember you are also my Knight and I gave you that position because of your strength – which I hope you will use to hear me out.”

Roman didn’t dare speak one word.

“He’s shown you his true eyes – his magic’s eyes. That’s what I meant about him allowing me to explain. If he’s shown you them, then it’s obvious that you were going to ask either me or Virgil about it. He’s got more self-control than anyone. If he’s shown you those eyes, it’s not because he lost control – it’s because he’s either hoping to scare you or to control you, and all too often, both.”

Roman opened his mouth to retort to that but regained enough logic to actually shut his mouth before any sound escaped. Virgil _had_ hoped to scare him with those eyes – to scare him enough to break that false persona, to scare him enough to come back to himself. And last night, Virgil had tried to scare him into submission – so that he could explain himself, with the starving himself thing. 

“I met Virgil a few years before I met you. I was young, just coming from a science lesson – those were always my favourite. They’d just explained the concept of time, and I was utterly in awe of it – and then I snuck out of the castle to the swamp. There was this tall boy – tall enough to be a teenager growing out of their teenage years, or a very young adult. And he was just sitting on a log, crying. His eyes were an unnatural purple – not the pure fire version that you’ve seen, but just a bright purple iris.”

A teenage boy – but that didn’t make sense. Roman had seen Virgil as a twelve-year-old boy – a scrawny, just shorter than he was, boy. With onyx eyes, hinted with brown. But another voice whispered to Roman – reminding him of another man he’d met, a suspiciously young adult with unnaturally-coloured eyes. Idly, Roman wondered that if he had managed to get Deceit truly mad, or if Deceit had truly and utterly wanted to frighten him, if Deceit’s own iris would shift into a more flaming yellow, the sickening colour flickering like smoke. 

“He looked at me with those eyes and just smiled. And it was not a kind smile – it was the kind that you always imagined seeing the monster under your bed wearing. It was the smile that you always draw on the hideous figures that you draw as a child when told to draw a cruel creature. And he reached out his hand to touch me.”

And Roman knew without Thomas saying that Virgil reaching his hand out was a very different scenario to which he’d held out that same hand for Roman, years later.

“I couldn’t run; my legs were shaking far too much. His hand touched mine, although he had to stoop to reach down that far, and I knew exactly what he was in that moment. Anyone could, when touching him.” 

It took Roman biting on his tongue to stop him from screeching a protest. Virgil had touched him before, and he was very much still in the dark, still unknowing, still confused. Thomas, finally, looked at him. Roman had to fight the urge, again, to strangle his King as he huffed an exasperated sigh.

“You’re wondering how you don’t know, then, aren’t you? You do know, Roman. You’ve always known. I spent most of my life introducing him, trying to warn people away so that they wouldn’t touch him accidentally. You have always known exactly what he is.” 

Later, Roman would remember the beat between the last of Thomas’ words and the start of the realization that changed absolutely everything.

He’d remember the way that they’d reached the top of the hill, and that the turrets of the castle could be seen just a few more miles away. He’d remember the way that Thomas was crying, crying as if his heart was annihilating itself within his ribs. 

But in that moment, he just felt nothing.

Then his years and his experiences fell away from him, and he was twelve years old again, sitting in some swamp water, looking up at the boy offering his hand to him. Because suddenly, Roman knew exactly what Virgil was. 

Knew.

Had always known.

Known because of the shadows that had seemed to gravitate towards whatever corner that he was in, because of the way that the night’s wind had always seemed to whisper its secrets to him. Knew, as he probably had done all along in some level of consciousness, because of the way that only monsters could make other monsters run away. 

Knew because of the way that Thomas had named him, as a small child – not as a joke, as Roman had assumed. Not as some sort of cursed name that Virgil had given himself. Thomas – that pure-hearted, sweet child – had tried to warn everyone by telling them right away what Virgil was.

Virgil had been named for the magic that he had coursing through his veins – _Anxiety_. The literal embodiment of fear itself, manifested into powers that would cause people to shake and scream and cry.

“He knows your worst fears the moment that his skin touches yours – and with his magic, he becomes them. And my little eight-year-old self, fresh out of learning about time and how all forces obey it… I saw him as he shrunk, as the years fell off of his face until he was exactly my age, too. Nothing scared me more. I told you the first time that we met – I told you that he gave me nightmares for weeks. It was true.”

Virgil hadn’t told Roman his true name until recently, perhaps to continue to frighten Thomas – because what was scarier than telling people that there was a monster, but not have them believe it? 

“But I was – was stupid. He spent the better part of an hour putting me through various types of fears that had me near catatonic in terror, and then he stopped. I think he expected me to run away the moment he let up – but I didn’t run. I crawled up to him, where he was still sitting on the log just watching me scream in fear and asked if he wanted to talk about whatever it was that had made him cry before.” 

Roman closed his eyes, turning his head away. _Oh, Thomas. Darling, sweet, foolish Thomas._ Of course only Thomas, the one that owned the better parts of Roman’s soul and heart, would want to console the person with the magic of fear. 

Thomas smiled, his eyes fixed on that scene that had played out years ago. “He never answered me – but he broke completely at that point. Started sobbing. To be honest, that scared me much more than his visions of burning had. Once he’d calmed down, he just looked so lost that I offered to help him. I’ll never forget his face, at that moment – pure shock. He’d never been offered help before. So I talked to him about a deal instead. He understood deals better, I think – liked deals. I didn’t really understand what he offered me, but I understood that it would help him… And so, I agreed. We’ve been together ever since – as you said, you and I are rarely alone without him.”

It was a few minutes later that Thomas gasped, turning around in his saddle to look at Roman. “You can talk now. I’m sorry that I forbade you from talking – I just thought that I wouldn’t get through a single sentence without you interrupting me-“

Roman did indeed interrupt this sentence – but it was by reaching over and tugging both horses to a halt so that both mares were quite literally pressed against each other’s sides. Thomas stared at him wordlessly – waiting for his judgement, Roman realized. Roman didn’t say a single thing as he reached around Thomas and tugged him bodily closer until the two were leaning into the hug, Roman praying that the horses wouldn’t move away from each other – the hug was awkward positioning enough, but if the horses dared move, it was about to become downright painful. 

Both men leaned back after a couple of seconds, staring at each other. “Roman, you’re bleeding,” Thomas said, leaning forwards to wipe at Roman’s face with his hand. “Did you bite your tongue?”

“I had to keep my mouth shut somehow,” Roman said, batting Thomas’s hand away playfully, slowly coming to realize that his mouth was indeed full of the coppery tang of blood. “What was the deal?”

Thomas nodded slowly, guiding his horse again into that slow walk where they could both hold a conversation. “I think you also know the answer to that one.”

“I’ve always known that you two were connected somehow,” Roman considered. “I never thought that this was the reason why.”

“What did you think was the reason?” 

Roman blushed in response, thinking of the way that Thomas and Virgil were always together, that they shared a bedroom, that they seemed to always find answers in each other’s eyes, and that was enough of an answer for Thomas. Thomas, however, did not answer that hidden question in Roman’s eyes, although he surely must have recognised it. 

“The deal – I knew he needed help. Magic can consume you if you recognise it and don’t use it – and Virgil had obviously known about his magic for a long time, even then. I offered myself – I said that he could use me to get it out of his system, that he could store the magic within me if he needed to. But he refused that – said that it would destroy just one person if they held onto it. So, we decided to share it. Only he can use it, though – I’m basically just a storage jar that can also drink the wine that it holds, provided that he’s the one to first pour in the wine.”

“He uses his magic on you, even now?” Roman asked, horrified. 

“In the small ways,” Thomas said. “Like, at parties – I get social anxiety quite badly. Sometimes it’s only nightmares, or sometimes I get depressed quite badly. But I know for a fact that Virgil has it worse – he uses his magic on himself, mostly. He only uses it on me when he can no longer bear it for himself.” 

Roman had no words for what he felt for Thomas, what he felt for Virgil at that moment. It was an interesting mix of pity and graciousness and thankfulness – an interesting emotion, but one without a label. 

He almost understood why Logan found it so extraordinarily annoying. 

“What did he give you, in return? You offered yourself. What did he give you in return?” 

Thomas opened his mouth for a moment. “I told him that he couldn’t use his powers on another person without my saying so. It’s why I got annoyed with him last night – he touched you, didn’t he? His magic was somehow extending itself to you – which is why you felt so awful. You weren’t hungering for alcohol, you were _anxious_. That’s why Virgil and I had to recuperate – had to ground him again with me, so that he wouldn’t use you unknowingly. That’s why he all but ran away – distance helps. It’s why we’re never far apart – because if he had to handle it himself, I don’t think he’d do very well. Of course, he can’t always control it – can explode with the power of it. That’s why I continued to warn everyone I could about him, using ‘Anxiety’ as his name. I couldn’t take the risk of him going back on his deal.” 

“He gave you something else as well,” Roman said, noticing the way that Thomas’s eyes were suddenly very much fixed on the path ahead. 

“He did.”

“What was it?” 

Thomas only shook his head. “The answer to that question is among only a few things I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me?” 

Roman tried not to feel frustrated as Thomas groaned, his knee starting to nervously bounce within the stirrup. “No – that’s the wrong word. I can – I would. But I do not want to, and you don’t need to know.” Roman opened his mouth in indignation, frantically searching for the words to persuade Thomas otherwise, but the King held up his hand. “Please, Roman. Please do not make me tell you.”

Roman quirked an eyebrow, quietly evaluating the way that Thomas had used ‘please’ in such a tone that it had tugged on his heartstrings. “Fine, but I need to say something first.” 

“You’re asking permission to talk? Logan would honestly cry with joy, if he were here.” Thomas’s deliberate light tone might have fooled anyone – if that someone wasn’t Roman.   
But that someone was Roman, and he was no fool when it came to Thomas. “You are the best part of me and my life, and I am honoured to be a part of your own.”

“I do wish you would stop making me cry,” Thomas said with a small voice, finally pulling down on the hood of his cloak so that only the lower half of his face could be seen. “I’m an ugly crier.” 

“Is there any particular reason that you’re so emotional, Thomas?” Roman teased, glancing forwards to be stunned at the sight of the gate to the castle. Everything – from the bricks to the guardhouse – screamed home. 

Thomas laughed but didn’t answer – didn’t have to.

Not as the gates opened and two people sprinted out, whilst a third merely shook their head and leaned nonchalantly against the barely opened gate. Roman let out a little sob at the sight – he couldn’t help it, as he hurriedly dismounted from his horse, sensing that Thomas was doing the same beside him. And Roman was treated to the sight of Thomas willingly running uphill without a single complaint or moan of incoming death, his cloak billowing behind him as his hood was tugged back downwards. 

The two incoming sprinters couldn’t have been more different – one was making a weird high-pitched sound as he ran, a strange mixture of laughing and crying combined into a wordless shriek. The other was silent – but if Roman concentrated, which was most difficult as he was sprinting as fast as his sore body would allow, he could see the way that his mouth was agape.

Whether that was from a cry or merely the gasping of actual air, Roman would never find out. Didn’t care as all four of them collided into each other anyway, a tangled mess of limbs and hair and cloaks. 

Roman was home.


	16. 20 Days until Burning

Roman reigned in his fury, scowling at one who he had never seen coming – one who he had once thought would never betray him. “I will never talk to you again, Patton.”

“I will not allow you to delude yourself any longer,” Patton said, crossing his arms tightly as he just glared at Roman with enough frustration that it made his eyes almost appear dark in the sunlight.

They stayed that way for several moments until both Virgil and Logan snapped at the same time.

“You are honestly both utterly ridiculous –“

“It’s just a cloud, guys, really, just give it a rest –“

“It is not just a cloud, Virgil!” Patton exclaimed, dismayed. “It is clearly shaped like a puppy – you can see its tail, and the floppy ears!”

“I keep telling you, you’re wrong,” hissed Roman, throwing a stray piece of lettuce into Patton’s face. “It’s a cat – those floppy ears are its front legs, you swine.” Patton swatted at the lettuce as if it offended him and brushed it hurriedly off to the surrounding grass, muttering something about healthy foods and how they disgusted his very soul.

When Logan had suggested that they all took a picnic, Roman had gladly lunged at the chance to get out of the castle and relax. Since he’d gotten back, Thomas and Logan had delightedly heaped a few hundred tasks onto his lap, insisting that it was his fault that the pair now had a months-worth of work. He hadn’t minded in the least – but that still hadn’t stopped him from happily and eagerly taking any chance he could to get away from it all.

Now that the five were here, Roman was beginning to regret it. It was still winter – the air was far too brisk for any sane person to enjoy lounging around, and they were just sitting still on the grassy plains surrounding the castle – nothing to shield them from nature’s wrath. But it had provided Patton and Roman a fantastic chance to spot clouds and derive different pictures from them, fulfilling their ultimate goal of irritating their company.

“Why is there literally only lettuce and carrots in this lunch basket?” Thomas inquired, cutting across Logan’s lecture about the temporary nature of clouds and therefore Patton and Roman’s stupidity at their arguments about it. “Have you not heard of cake?”

“I was trying to limit your unhealthy options,” Logan relied, as if he weren’t looking down at the carrot sticks with a face of ultimate disgust.

“You didn’t limit it, you idiot,” Virgil commented, from where he was curled into a ball in his jacket. “You only brought carrots and lettuce – that’s eliminating unhealthy stuff entirely.”

Logan tried not to look smug and failed miserably. “Good; now Thomas will have to be healthy.”

Roman rolled his eyes at Patton, who shrugged back – their rivalry already forgotten, swept away. “I’ve tried to get Thomas to be healthy for years – what makes you think you’ll succeed?”

“It’s in my nature to succeed where you failed,” Logan preened, before scowling at him. “How is it that you two have gone back to normal now?”

“Normal?” Roman repeated, dramatically leaning into Patton’s chest and swooning. “Whatever do you mean, normal? Haven’t Patton and I always been the dearest of friends?”

“This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the cloud has disappeared and changed its shape, does it?” Virgil asked, munching on a carrot stick good-naturedly.

“Absolutely not,” Patton replied. “It looks more like a dragon now, anyway.”

Roman shot upright, twisting his head to look at Patton in horror, his hand going to clutch at his chest. “Traitor! It’s clearly a dog now!” Virgil and Logan groaned simultaneously, whilst Thomas pawed through the food basket yet again, as if he hadn’t done it before at least twice.

“I think that if I stay out here for another moment,” Thomas stated, his mission to find the non-existent cake failed, “my nose may very well fall off from the cold. Might we move this endeavour indoors?”

Roman leaped up, gleefully and not at all apologetically spraying carrot sticks and lettuce leaves everywhere. “Thomas, you _do_ have a brain! What a marvellous suggestion; I feel as though I could kiss you.”

Thomas cringed, but followed Roman’s lead in getting to his feet. “As if you would consider kissing anyone besides your own reflection,” he smiled, helping Logan pack the remaining food and blankets back into the basket.

“Alas, this is true,” Roman sighed, offering his arms to both Patton and Virgil – only one of which accepting, the other shooting him an exasperated look and got up by himself. “But rest assured; my mirror and I don’t plan on doing anything more than kisses before we get married. We’re very responsible.”

“How reflective of you,” Logan commented. Roman stopped, harshly bringing Patton to a halt as well. Their odd little group had started a brisk walk back, but suddenly the wind did not matter to Roman as much in the face of Logan’s reply. Logan looked back, looking faintly puzzled at the frozen pair from where they were a few meters behind. “Patton? Roman? Aren’t you coming?”

“You just made a _joke_ ,” Roman whispered, before repeating it louder. Patton began giggling, and that set Roman off right alongside him. “You actually have the capacity for humour! Someone – mark the date! Today will forever be known as the day that the great Logan, owner of the position ‘can always be counted on to not make a joke’, has resigned! What shall this momentous occasion be called, Patton?”

Patton fell against Roman helplessly, laughter crippling both of their abilities to stand and walk straight. Nevertheless, Thomas and Virgil looked at each other and decided immediately that no joke would be worth freezing themselves for another moment and walked on, obviously heading to a warmer, comfortably seated area. Giggling, Roman and Patton just managed to follow – if only because Logan literally grabbed each of their collars and dragged them bodily forward, muttering about how the citizens shouldn’t be surprised if the castle’s head Knight and head Caterer suddenly went missing.

As they collapsed through a door leading to one of the comfier lounges that made up the King’s suite, Roman spotted how Virgil and Thomas fell silent immediately at the sight of them – but with a giggling Patton and reluctantly smiling Logan, it was a moment that could easily be missed. In the few moments of a head start, Thomas had settled himself in the seat directly in front of a fire that Roman suspected Virgil had started up and looked ready to fall asleep. Virgil was still kneeling by the fire, curling himself into a ball in a way that made him look much younger.

“Another benefit to being inside,” Thomas commented, watching as Roman came to sit beside him, “is that there are no clouds for you to argue over.”

Logan sat himself down in the lone armchair, humming in agreement. For a second, Roman was convinced that Logan made the move to pull Patton onto his lap – but then Patton stretched, blocking his view, and sat on the floor beside Logan anyway. “No, but there is a fire,” Patton said, leaning against Logan’s legs and resting his head on the man’s knee. “We can argue about what colour it is.”

Roman huffed a sigh and pulled his own legs up onto the sofa as well, sprawling himself over Thomas – the King and Logan giving each other long suffering looks in response. “But we both know that it’s orange, Pat.”

Patton grinned. “Yellow.”

“Orange!”

“Remind me why we reinstated his status,” Virgil growled, shooting Roman a look that had Roman laughing again. Roman’s hand went up – as it so often did – to stroke the familiar lines of his sash, which Logan had given back to him immediately after their hug on Roman’s first day back.

“We gave it back to him because there’s no one else stupid enough to constantly want to do exercise,” Thomas replied, grinning down at Roman, who merely rearranged his head so that it was more securely on his lap and winked at his King with enough cheek that it had Logan tutting.

Virgil, too, didn’t look entirely pleased. “We’ve got a twit for a Knight. At least Patton can correctly tell colours.”

“That’s why I was promoted? Because I can tell colours?” Patton yelped, waving his arms so close to Logan’s face that the man flinched.

Roman was not about to let the comment slide either. “What do you mean, he’s right about the colour? Fire is normally orange!”

Virgil shrugged both of the indignant comments away, sighing for such a long time that Roman was tempted to ask him if he wanted a medal. But before he had the chance, a servant knocked politely on the door and entered, carrying something that immediately made Roman forget about his insult. He sat up, staring at Thomas in amazement. “You asked for cake?”

Thomas raised an eyebrow, thanking the servant as she placed the dessert on the table, bowed at both him and Patton and left. “Was I supposed to ask for more carrots?”

Logan looked ready to thunderously insist that _yes_ , he was but was stalled by Patton squealing and digging into what looked like the chocolate icing with delight. “I love every single one of my staff,” Patton moaned through a mouthful of said cake. “They’re such good cooks.”

“They only became your staff three months ago,” Logan reminded him, gently relieving Patton of the simply huge piece that he’d cut himself and cutting it neatly into two, giving Patton back half of his original slice and keeping the other for himself.

Patton tried and failed not to look devastated at his much-diminished slice. “True, but they’ve always been amazing cooks.”

Thomas idly leant forwards and cut three slices more, using some napkins to neatly pass them to Roman and Virgil. “I forgot to ask them to bring up some water, though – we’re going to be parched after this.”

Patton got to his feet abruptly, startling Logan into half-rising, too. “I’ll go get some, no problem there.”

Logan scoffed, setting his half-finished piece of cake on the table – either not seeing how Patton was eyeing it, or ignoring him. “Allow me – you’re too slow. By the time you get back with some drinks, we would have all died of dehydration.”

“As if,” Patton said, a smile creeping onto his face. “I bet that I’ll beat you back here with drinks.”

Logan’s eyes shifted to something that Roman could only describe as predatory intent, focussing only on the man with his hands on his hips, standing in front of him. “And what, pray tell me, are you going to bet on that?”

Patton pouted, but held out his hand to Logan. “I want black and white suits.”

Logan considered this, much to Roman’s eternal confusion. But then Logan’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded curtly at Patton. “I want black and blue.” They shook hands.

Patton beamed. “You’re on.”

Roman was left speechless as they both sped off in different directions, Patton practically skipping his way down the staircase in such a way that Roman’s teeth were locked in a grimace until he got safely at the bottom. Thomas sighed as he got up, excusing himself to the bathroom. “I reckon I have enough time to draw myself a bath anyway, even if both of them had gone. I’ll be back in a moment,” he smiled, shutting the door behind him and leaving Roman utterly confused on the sofa.

“What were they even betting on?” He asked, looking down at the fireplace for Virgil but having to blink at the male no longer being there.

“They’ve apparently been doing that for around two months.”

Roman raised an eyebrow at Virgil’s voice, looking around until he found him sprawled across the ledge below the wide window, a book covering a variety of weapons in his hands. He didn’t ask how long he had been there instead of the fireplace – wasn’t quite sure when he had moved but decided it didn’t matter. “And what, exactly, was ‘that’? They were betting on suits?”

Virgil smiled, looking fondly at the doorway in which both of them had disappeared. “No one’s sure exactly, but I have my suspicions.”

Roman realized that he was in a trap the moment that Virgil’s smile held out and the male looked back down at his book. Not the kind of trap he normally feared – but a trap nonetheless. Because it was at these moments, where he was alone with Virgil, that he began to think.

Roman hadn’t given himself time to think on what Thomas had told him, weeks ago. Had purposely thrown himself into doing things, like reforming the army and evaluating their soldiers, like sending out a few of his men to start getting Thomas’s homeless aid act in place in a few of the smaller towns. Had begged a very reluctant and cross Logan to help him find his own account at the castle, and had begrudgingly allowed him to help Roman decide which banks to put his savings into or find stock to invest in.

Logan had adored lecturing him – and had only agreed to doing so after he’d first actually walked off after hearing how Roman hadn’t known about his account. He’d apparently – according to Virgil, who had been watching and laughing himself hoarse – walked around aimlessly for a couple of minutes before proceeding to stare at a wall for exactly ten seconds, sigh, and go back to where Roman had been nervously waiting.

But here he was, despite all of that effort, watching Virgil’s smile and wondering how it could possibly be evil.

“Perhaps if you commissioned an artist to paint my portrait, it would last longer.”

Roman blinked and watched Virgil’s smile turn into something more jaded, a bit more sarcastic. He truly, for once, utterly had nothing to say. Virgil’s eyes flicked up from the book that Roman doubted he’d been reading anyway and met Roman’s, glittering. They stared at each other for a few seconds – Virgil merely waiting, and Roman scrabbling for some excuse to get himself out of here.

“If I did get an artist, you can rest assured that they would be here to paint me,” Roman finally said, the sentence coming far too late to gain any bite of humour.

“Poor thing,” tutted Virgil, his voice careful. “I’m sure they’d much rather paint me instead.”

“And if they did,” said Roman, “what colour would they use to do your eyes?”

He didn’t know quite why he said it, but he liked the result that it incurred even so. Virgil’s eyes – back to the normal black, Roman noted – shuttered, the glitter that normally lay in them winking out. The boy carefully got up from his seat and placed the book back on its proper place on the shelf, each one of his movements lined with grace and consideration. He then turned to face Roman, his teeth starting to gnaw lightly at his lower lip, his fingers tangling at the bottom of his shirt. “Do you have a preference?”

“Oh, yes,” crooned Roman, leaning forwards and effectively cornering Virgil against the bookshelf. He only placed one hand at Virgil’s shoulder height, not wanting to cage him in completely – but angled his body forward anyway, suggesting enough.

Virgil’s eyes darted back and forth between Roman, the door and down the hallway, scanning for any other people approaching. A light flush dusted itself over his pale face, and Roman found it endlessly endearing. But no trace of Virgil’s embarrassment found its way into his voice as he replied with a low tone, bringing a thrill to Roman’s own body. “Care to tell me what this mysterious preference is?”

“Of course not,” Roman replied, fighting to keep his own voice low when he wanted nothing more than to quite possibly squeal. “A man has to have some trace of mystery around him.”

“Indeed,” Virgil said, before nimbly ducking out from Roman’s arm and moving to stand a few steps away – away from the window, Roman noticed. Away from the source of light, which would allow Roman to see the traces of the blush that was the only hint to his embarrassment.

“But of course,” Roman continued, briefly wondering if he had a death wish. He straightened up and went again to stand directly in front of Virgil, before leaning casually against the bookshelf. “Some men just have far too much mystery surrounding them.”

“And what, exactly, do you think you should do about those kind of men?”

Roman wondered what he was doing – wondered what was happening. He’d flirted with Virgil in the past, naturally – had flirted with everyone. But Virgil had always, without a doubt, remained just as cool as he ever did, normally resorting to some type of threat concerning Roman’s life, or a good old-fashioned death-glare. But here he was, deliberately batting his eyes at Virgil just because of how it made his skin flush and awoke a certain longing in his hands to touch. And if he wasn’t very much mistaken, there Virgil was – flirting back.

Very well, too.

But that brought about the second thing that he was wondering about.

What business did he have flirting with a person who had the magic of fear in his fingertips? What business did he have enjoying the feeling of it?

“Those kind of men, I take requests from,” Roman said, hearing his voice drop into a purr and mentally congratulating himself on not having his voice mess up yet. “I like surprises – and with mysterious men, there’s always a surprise.”

Virgil laughed, and Roman had to clamp down on the rush he felt in response to watching Virgil throwing his head back and gazing heavenwards. “I think you’ll find that there are some mysteries that you just do not want to face, Princey.”

“Surprise me,” Roman said, not allowing that scorching intensity to fade into Virgil’s laughter. “I dare you.”

Virgil’s eyebrow rose as he stepped closer – close enough that if Roman merely nodded, their noses would touch. “You must truly be stupid to think that I’d tell you all of my secrets just because you dared me to.”

“Not stupid,” Roman said. “I prefer the term ‘brave’.”

Virgil blinked slowly, looking steadily up at Roman. “You are – definitely stupid enough to be brave.” Roman’s eyes strayed to Virgil’s lips – he couldn’t help it. They were so close – how was a man not supposed to look? By the time he tore his eyes away from them and forced himself to look back at Virgil, those black eyes were glittering smugly. Roman cursed himself – of course Virgil had noticed him ogling his lips. He couldn’t not notice – not when they were this close.

“The question is,” Virgil whispered, taking his own eyes to scan Roman’s face from top to bottom and to rest back on his eyes, “just how brave are you?”

He could feel Virgil’s breath move with his own, could feel the whisper of the words caressing his own lips. Was he deliberately doing that? It was driving him mad. 

Patton crashed through the door, scrambling to place the tray onto the table besides the cake and hurrying back to shut the door firmly, panting. “I’d like it to be known that I have beaten Logan back!” If Patton noticed how Virgil had practically jumped back from Roman abruptly as if he’d been burned, almost fleeing to sit back on the windowsill, he didn’t comment on it. Roman hadn’t moved, but he shot Virgil an amused glance anyway.

“When you’re the one running away, are you really in a position to be questioning my bravery?” Roman murmured to him, watching as Virgil’s face steadily turned from a flush into a darkening of anger. Roman flashed him an innocently pointed smile before stalking over to Patton, patting his back. “Congratulations on your victory – and the winning of your bet, whatever it may be for.”

Patton sagged against the door, firmly holding it closed. “It’s nothing important!”

Roman examined the giddy male, noting the furious blush across his cheeks. “Why are you stopping Logan from coming in? Haven’t you already won?”

“I did win,” Patton said, smiling weakly at Roman, “but the – ah – methods that I used to win are not going to make him particularly happy with me.”

_“PATTON!”_

Roman flinched as Logan’s roar sounded, merely a few meters away from the closed door. “Not particularly happy?” He frantically whispered to Patton, dropping down to help him keep the door closed – just in time. Logan pounded against the door furiously, pushing against the door with Patton and Roman holding it closed. “Patton, that is not ‘ _not_ particularly happy’. The man sounds like he’s considering murder.”

Patton waved a hand. “Semantics.”

“I’LL GIVE YOU SEMANTICS!” Logan yelled, pushing at the door with renewed vigour. Roman swore under his breath as the door began to move, pushing Patton back into him.

“I want daffodils at my funeral,” Patton told Roman, his eyes shining.

“I’ll make Virgil wear yellow,” Roman promised him, and shook his hand. “Farewell, my brother.”

Both men abruptly stood back, Patton holding out his arms as though he were about to accept his fate. Logan burst through the door, looking – for the first time since Roman had known him – utterly dishevelled. His hair was messed up and his face was doing an accurate impersonation of a tomato, and his collar looked as though it had been hurriedly stuck up to cover what looked like bruising on his neck –

“You,” Logan hissed, setting those eyes of utter rage on Patton, who failed to suppress a smile.

“You are not a good loser,” Roman told Logan, stepping between them firmly. “Let the man have his victory in peace.”

“I come back after five minutes and it’s already resorted to a murder situation?” Thomas commented, stepping around Roman, Logan and Patton as though they were pieces of furniture and collapsing back into his seat, neatly picking up his cake again. “Dinner and a show. My favourite kind.”

Virgil let out a sigh as he came to sit next to Thomas, idly reaching over and picking off a few crumbs from the King’s cake. “I feel as though you should get used to these things. Personally, I blame Roman.”

Roman raised a suggestive eyebrow at him, enjoying the way that Virgil sneered back at him. After a few moments, Roman realized that it was his turn to make excuses, and so he began by holding his hands up in a surrender as Thomas settled that exasperated gaze on him. “I blame Logan.”

Logan didn’t waste any time to straighten himself, push his glasses further up his nose and stiffly incline his head at Thomas. “It’s Patton’s fault. Blame him.”

Patton looked as he normally did under pressure – utterly frazzled. “I know it would make sense for me to blame Virgil now, but I can’t do that, he’s been so good these past few days – so I’ll also blame me. It’s my fault, punish me.”

“I know that it wasn’t your fault,” Thomas flatly said, although the twist of his lips indicated an incoming smile. “It’s never Patton’s fault.”

Logan and Roman looked at each other in horror. “Why are you so eager to think that I did it?” Roman asked, affronted.

Logan gestured wildly at Patton. “Logically, it was Patton’s fault, how can you not see that?”

“Patton would never do anything wrong,” Thomas said, absent-mindedly eating cake and occasionally breaking off pieces to give to Virgil, who was watching the wild game of pass-the-blame with interest.

Logan looked as though he was about to blow a fuse – and normally, Roman would have been delighted. But he was standing quite close – within an arm’s distance – and he was not particularly looking forward to getting punched. Logan was fit enough – definitely kept himself in shape. Not quite on Roman’s level, but certainly enough to make sure that whomever he punched, they would be in pain. Noting this, Roman followed the logical course of action; he began to inch himself out between Patton and Logan, sneaking minute steps backwards. Logan didn’t notice – he was too preoccupied furthering his argument to a completely blank-faced Thomas and Virgil. “You do not understand, the blame legitimately lies in him, you cannot just resort to trusting him!”

“But we can,” Thomas said.

“And we will,” Virgil finished, who pointedly ignored the glare that Roman was directing at him.

Logan turned to exasperatedly stare at Roman – before realizing that he was now looking at Patton, with no Roman in sight, thanks to Roman having made it to the opposite wall. Patton froze, before smiling innocently – which snapped the leash of control that Logan had been holding over himself. “You are coming with me, you absolute twit, and don’t think that just because you have the King fooled that you are blameless –“

Logan lunged forward and grabbed Patton roughly by his collar, before stalking out of the same door he’d just crashed in a few minutes prior. Patton turned and waved energetically to a dumbfounded Roman, before shutting the door behind their pair as they left – possibly for Logan to murder him in peace.

Roman turned to Thomas and Virgil with a wide-eyed look.

The pair merely fixed him with carefully blank looks before turning back to each other, pouring themselves the drinks that Patton had painstakingly brought up.

It didn’t make Roman want to give up the last say before he joined them.

“It was actually Logan’s fault, I swear.”


	17. 12 Days until Burning

Roman was lying awake, watching the moon climb higher in its arc through the sky, listening to the pure silence of the castle. It had always soothed him, having pathetic curtains that never managed to truly block all of the light out. It allowed him to look up to the sky and just think.

Even though thinking turned out to be even more painful than it already was.

Because, as he so often was, he was thinking about Virgil.

Thinking of the way that the blush had spread itself across those pale cheeks, the way that Virgil bit the inside of cheek to perhaps stop that blush from spreading too far. Thinking about the way that Virgil had looked far too smug as he caught Roman looking at his lips and hadn’t stepped away as he must have felt Roman’s breath on his cheek, hadn’t even flinched at the fact their noses had just touched.

But even as Roman kept turning it over in his head, there was one thing that made it impossible to enjoy those images to the fullest. Virgil ran away – had turned tail and run the moment that Patton had entered.

Why?

Had he done something wrong? He had been high on the rush of having Virgil flirt back, had amped up his efforts in response to the male actually reciprocating the playful banter, the suggestive jokes. Perhaps he’d taken it too far.

He wouldn’t help himself like this, Roman slowly came to realize, staring at the moon. Huffing, he forced himself to abandon the warmth of his bed and shove suitable clothes on, adding a cloak to help conceal any evidence of what he’d been thinking about, lying still for hours with his head full of another man. 

Roman was not particularly sure of where he was going; all he knew was that he didn’t like the dark, and he didn’t want to be alone. 

It wasn’t surprising to him that he ended up outside Thomas and Virgil’s room, grinning guiltily at the guards on duty as they roused themselves from the kind of stupor that ordinary people went into when faced with duty at an ungodly time in the morning. Luckily, they didn’t question him as he quietly opened the door and crept in. 

He smiled at the sight of Thomas sound asleep in his bed, padding quietly across the room. Slowly, Roman grabbed the covers that the King had kicked off himself in some weird, wriggling manoeuvre and pulled them gently back over his body, ignoring how Thomas faintly snored in response and merely nestled deeper into his pillows. 

Roman sometimes wondered what he’d do if he waltzed in here one night and there was another person besides the normal four that he was used to in Thomas’s bed. It was particularly odd, he knew, for the King to have no potential suitor lined up. After all, Thomas was over twenty, attractive and bestowed with the mightily appealing factor of a kingdom. But the idea of Thomas touching someone else, looking at them with eyes full of adoration – that was simply absurd, and the idea frankly made Roman’s toes curl. 

He wanted it for his friend – wanted him to find someone who knew how perfect he was and treated him as such. But could Roman deal with someone taking his closest friend for their own? Where would that leave him? Tonight was simply the night for self-doubting questions, Roman mused, stretching his arms above his head. For a moment, he considered slipping into the opposite side of the King’s bed. He knew he’d fall asleep much easier, as he always had done when next to the King. Thomas wouldn’t question it, either. It had happened too many times in the past for it to become an outlier. 

But Roman turned away instead, creeping quietly to look out of the curtains. The view of the moon was much more beautiful from the double glass doors leading to Thomas’s personal balcony; it looked so much closer, almost like he could touch it if he wished. 

“I’ll never understand people’s obsession with the moon,” a voice murmured, mere inches from Roman’s ear. Roman’s skin prickled in response to Virgil’s low voice, as if beckoning to the man. 

“Liar,” Roman said, turning slowly around to see Virgil, fully dressed and tired. “I’ve seen you look at it how most people would look at their loved ones.”

“Have you, now?” Virgil replied, an eyebrow rising coolly. Roman only nodded, casting a deliberate glance to Thomas and slowly walking out of the rooms, giving another half-smile to the guards. Virgil followed, his steps utterly silent on the stones. Roman didn’t have a particular destination in mind; he just wandered away from the residential suite, knowing that people would not particularly be pleased at hearing any sounds that he and Virgil would be making – regardless of whether this particular meeting went well or to ruin. 

In the end, Virgil took the lead, his black cloak streaming behind him in such a way that it was easy to follow. Virgil waved a hand to the guards standing either side of the ballroom, their eyes tracking him with a sense of nervousness – it was indeed rare to see Virgil and Roman alone without Thomas. They looked more relieved to see Roman, though, who ensured that he gave his most pleasant smiles to them before shutting the huge doors behind him with more than a little effort; he could hear the deliberate humming that Virgil was doing, not trying particularly hard to cover up his laughter at watching Roman work. 

Finally, the doors were shut. Roman turned and leisurely strolled to where Virgil had sat down on some steps, illuminated by the light of the moon streaming in from the simply enormous window panels. Roman had noted it before – how the moon’s light treated Virgil as a friend, how it caressed the shadows that normally lay beneath his eyes or under his jaw and softened them. Sunlight normally made him look entirely too pale and made him look sallow, unhealthy.

But in the moonlight, Virgil was beautiful.

“With the way that you’re looking at me,” said Virgil, his eyes fixed on Roman’s as Roman still walked closer, “a man might get ideas.”

“And what kind of ideas are they?” Roman asked, sitting beside him, more than a healthy distance away. Far enough that he couldn’t feel Virgil’s body heat and start to get more ideas than he was already harbouring. 

“The kind that tells me that you’re trying to decide whether to kiss or kill me.”

Roman’s heart skipped a beat. He didn’t dare move, staring pointedly towards the double doors that now separated them from the rest of the world until his eyes started to burn. “Would either of those be a problem?”

“I can see a fair few in regards to the murder,” Virgil said. “Less so with – with the other thing.”

That did not help Roman in his quest to stop all of the chemistry searing through his blood. He briefly thanked the fact that it was night, and that Virgil probably could not see how his face was flooding with colour and his neck was reddening. He stood slowly, not trying to startle Virgil with any abrupt movements, and knelt down on the steps before him – not touching him, but close enough that Roman knew that Virgil could probably feel him shaking. 

“Is this a problem?”

Virgil’s eyes darted to again rest on Roman’s, mere centimetres away from his own. He shook his head minutely, as if he couldn’t bare to move his face from where it was so nearly touching Roman’s. Roman didn’t just want to kiss him – in fact, the desire almost became a full-blown need. But he would be damned if he just took what he wanted without a thought for his partner.

He lifted one of his hands, clearly showing Virgil what he was about to do. Virgil merely waited, watchful, as Roman steadily brought his hand closer to his face. He let a single finger touch his cheek, allowing a second for Virgil to recognise what the touch was, before slowly drawing it downwards, following the slope of his cheek down towards his chin, barely touching the skin. From Virgil’s chin, the finger went along his jaw line, before following the right side of his neck down to where it met with his shoulder. 

Perhaps it was because of the general lack of touch that had Virgil unused to it – perhaps that was why he seemed entirely too responsive to Roman’s touch. The man had closed his eyes as Roman brought his other hand up to explore the lines of Virgil’s face and torso and arms with touch, and his breathing had turned ragged around the time that Roman had picked up one of Virgil’s hands and had started playing with his fingers.

Such dainty, long-fingered hands Virgil had. Pale, with nails that were bitten badly enough to be rugged, and knuckles that had faint stars on them. Roman grinned at the sight of those scars – comparing them to the ones that he had on his own knuckles, from punching a wall nearly a month ago. His were fresher and redder, but he didn’t doubt that his would end up like Virgil’s – white stars bursting along the skin covering the knuckles, that glimmered as they moved and tensed and flowed. 

“Is this a problem?” Roman breathed again, looking up from where he’d been inspecting Virgil’s hands for several moments now.

“Yes,” Virgil answered, but his hands tightened around Roman’s – a confusing action, as Roman would have dropped all contact the moment that Virgil even hinted towards distress. “There is a problem.”

“What is it?”

“My problem is that you aren’t kissing me right at this second.”

Virgil’s hands moved, tugging Roman in to place his own hands at Virgil’s waist. Virgil’s knee rose and came _very_ close to a particular area that Roman was trying to ignore for his partner’s sake – not when he was already too far gone to think much at all. 

As soon as Virgil was satisfied that Roman’s hands weren’t going to leave their mightily comfortable place in the crook of his waist, his hands came up to cup Roman’s jaw, a beckoning on his fingertips to come closer, to push his face forwards a slight bit more to solve that particular problem. 

“Are you sure?” Roman asked. Pulling away seemed impossible – he thought he would prefer dying than to take his hands away or to pull his face away from the beautiful man in front of him. But he needed to be sure – needed to make sure that this was what Virgil wanted over his disgust for touch. 

“Roman,” Virgil sighed, and Roman felt stars shooting in his blood at the way that Virgil had said his name, “I’ve told you that you not kissing me is the problem. Help me fix it. Please. Help me?”

It didn’t sound like a question, that last part. It was a command disguised as a question. Roman normally hated being told what to do – had always hated blind obedience. But that command on Virgil’s lips practically broke him right there.

“Tell me to stop the moment it gets too much, and I will,” Roman said. He would rather be tortured for all eternity than stop himself unleashing the bellowing in his lungs, in his bloodstream, but if Virgil even hinted that he wasn’t happy, Roman would find a way. 

“Why would I want you to stop?” Virgil asked, leaning back with a groan. Roman didn’t pull back, just stayed looking up at Virgil with what surely was a simmering look. He kept his hands on Virgil’s waist, not willing to entirely let go just yet. Virgil frowned, pulling his hands from Roman’s face to move them behind him, leaning back on them. “If anything, you’re the one that will want to stop.” Virgil’s eyes flared in sudden panic. “Is that why you’ve been stalling? Do you not want to –“

“Virge,” Roman interrupted, before the tension building in Virgil’s eyes got too much for both of them, “Virgil, you need only look a little lower to know that I very much want to.” Though Virgil’s face reddened drastically, he kept those dark eyes firmly on Roman’s face – something that Roman very much appreciated. 

Virgil sighed. “No, you don’t. You don’t know the full story – I’m a selfish ass for doing this to you, for wanting you. You don’t know what I am, what’ll happen if I lose control for a second as I’m touching you.”

Roman considered this and made himself more comfortable on his knees before Virgil. “Are you maybe referring to the fact you have magic?” 

Virgil stared hard at him, and his eyes looked as though their centre was being heated with a fire of a familiar colour – Roman found that he very much preferred the purple, despite the fact it meant Virgil was furious. “How much do you know?” Virgil asked, his voice void of all emotion. “How much did he tell you?”

Roman didn’t ask how Virgil knew that Thomas had told him. “I’d say ‘all of it’, but since I still have questions, I have just decided to go with a good old ‘some’.” 

Virgil laughed hollowly. “You have questions? What is there to question? I’m scum, I’m a disorder, and my very existence serves to bring things down. Isn’t that what you told me, a while ago? You were right. You were so, extraordinarily, right – and you didn’t even know then what you do now.” Roman flinched, guilt smothering all heat he’d been feeling up to this point. “That’s right, you’re scared of me. That’s why you haven’t made the move to touch me before, isn’t it?” Virgil spat, his eyes pure wrath. “I’ve seen you flinch away before; you never touch me, if you can help it.”

Roman just looked at him. “I don’t touch you, you cretin, because you don’t like to be touched.”

Virgil’s anger seemed to wither at the statement. “What?”

“When we were younger, you never seemed to like touch,” Roman said, feeling rather odd suddenly. “You always flinched when it was with someone other than Thomas.”

“I did,” Virgil replied, his tone leaning more towards bitterness now. “You try touching people and seeing their worst fears in that split second. It only gets easier with other people that I’ve touched before because I know what to expect.”

“Is that what it’s like?” Roman wondered aloud, unable to keep his questions silent. “You always see people’s fears if you touch them?”

Virgil seemed to fold into himself. “Yes, but - if I’m concentrating enough to control the magic – if I know exactly where a person is touching, I can stop it from rising. I can repress it, so I don’t have to see it.”

“I’m not a genius,” Roman said, forbidding Virgil to laugh with a scowl, “but that doesn’t seem clever or healthy.”

“Healthy,” repeated Virgil, rolling the word on his tongue as if he could taste it. “I’m a thing that’s consumed by a magic that is a disorder by nature. It’s been a long time since someone has called my health to mind. As long as I control it, contain it… No one cares about my health. Otherwise they would have to worry about their own.”

“But you have to be concentrating on it in order to repress it?” Roman said, that fact above all sticking out. 

“Yes. Having Thomas helps – he’s always helped. He takes the edge off the magic; I can go days without having to think about it, sometimes, because it’s shared between us. But if I’m particularly emotional, or carefree, it boils over. It doesn’t like to be ignored.”

Roman hummed in agreement, before finally taking his hands away from Virgil’s waist. He watched as the man sighed in something akin to relief and regret at the same time and started as an idea came to him. “Virge. Your magic is fear, right?”

Virgil looked at him oddly. “More or less.”

“So, hit me with it.” 

Virgil’s facial expression did not move from that perfect blankness, even as the man closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then, he smiled. “Say that again.”

“Hit me with it,” Roman repeated, trying not to feel stupid but failing as Virgil truly began to smile. 

“I never thought I’d see a day where you gave me an invitation to hit you,” Virgil said, the infamous snarky tone returning. 

“Stop laughing at me and start hitting me.”

“No.”

Roman pulled up short and stared hard at Virgil. The man looked imperiously bored, if a little tired. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“Roman, you have absolutely no idea what you’re asking me to do. Do you not remember what happened after I hit you in the jaw after being furious that you were – busy with another person? That little touch caused you to have awful symptoms for days afterwards. And that guy that I pulled off of you – I had to track him down before I got to the castle, too, and make sure that I hadn’t given him some stupid anxiety either. That was his fear, you know,” Virgil broke off, stumbling slightly. “That earthquake thing. That’s how I did it – it was his fear, and so my magic wanted to embody it, as it always does. Because it’s evil, because it’s cruel. And you want me to hit you with it?”

“You either hit me with it now, or hit me with it later,” Roman said, wondering idly if he was being stubborn. “I’m brave, I can take it. You need to use it so that your store is empty – and I need to know how it feels, and how to prepare for it.”

“Why?” Virgil groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. “Why on earth would you want me to hit you with it at all? After all these years, I hadn’t pegged you as a masochist, and yet here you are –“

“Stop hiding behind the smart comments,” Roman said, shoving the urge to grab Virgil’s hands and supressing it. “Trust me, shadow-heart, I’m not doing this for my own pleasure. I’m doing this so that you can lose control.” Virgil’s smile disappeared just as the moon’s light died, some cloud obscuring its path in through the window. “You said it yourself – you can’t contain it if emotions get you too riled up, or you get too passionate. And trust me,” Roman said, looking down at him, “I plan on getting you there. I refuse to kiss you until I know it’s both safe and pleasurable for you. I refuse to kiss you knowing that you have to be thinking about constantly keeping the magic down instead of kissing me back. I refuse to kiss you if you’re not going to be fully yourself with me. That being said,” Roman continued, finding himself on a roll, “you can either empty yourself of magic right now by using it on me, or help me get used to it so that when it does erupt if I get you particularly – excited – I am not unprepared.” 

“You’re insane,” Virgil said, standing up onto the stairs. He was a step or two higher than Roman, but Roman felt gratified that even so, they were roughly at a level height. “This isn’t a thing that you can just get used to, you idiot.”

“Then we go with the other option and use it all up so that I won’t have to,” Roman shrugged. Virgil’s eyes glowed with enough murderous intent that Roman knew he was lucky the man wasn’t already strangling him. “Also, you and Thomas have both gotten used to it, apparently.”

Virgil blinked. “Thomas does not bear the brunt of this magic; I would never allow him to. And I – I have had many years to learn.”

“How many years?” Roman asked, not bothering to hide how his tone shifted to something a little more suspicious. Virgil’s mouth twitched – but not in the direction of a smile. When it became clear that Virgil would not answer, Roman tried again. “How old are you?”

“This body is the exact same age as Thomas,” Virgil replied, his eyes glinting coolly. “I’m twenty-five.”

“And yet when Thomas first saw you – when he was eight – you were a teenager.” Roman knew that he was treading on dangerous ground. But he’d never been a man to stop something just because it was dangerous. 

“How interesting,” Virgil said, his voice suggesting the very opposite. 

“Do you know who else can seem to manipulate time as he so desires?” Roman asked him, pointedly. “Your old friend – the one with the yellow eyes. You may have heard of him… Goes by the name of Deceit –“

Virgil’s nose flared. “ _Title_ of Deceit. That isn’t his name.” 

“And what is his name?” Roman asked, taking a step backwards. “Surely you must have heard it somewhere – on the streets, when you were friends, when you were more than friends –“ The window to Roman’s left cracked in the corner, and Roman marked it. “More than friends, then? Come now, Virgil, that’s embarrassing. Having an ex like Deceit really does top off everything stupid I’ve ever done – but last time I checked, he looked in his late twenties, and has done since I was twelve. Which, if you were a child at that time, puts him down for even more crimes based in perversion –“

“Stop,” Virgil warned, but Roman was just getting warmed up.

“Since you and he went at it, what was his techniques for avoiding your fear magic boiling over when he laid you on his bed? Or did he mask it over with his trickery magic – that would make sense, Logan would be impressed –“

He knew he’d gone too far when Virgil’s lips went white and the only colour on his face was the purple of his eyes. 

He still found that he preferred the purple over the onyx, though.

Even when a sudden bolt of fear struck his chest, as palpable as a blade of lightning, and he began to scream.


	18. 10 Days until Burning

Roman woke up and wished more than anything that he hadn’t. 

Especially not as Thomas glared at him from where he sat at his desk, his eyebrows lowered over his eyes so that their normally honey-appearance seemed darker. Roman contemplated closing his eyes and trying to fall back into the blissfully blank world – where there was nobody to glare at him.

But even he knew there would be no fooling Thomas.

“How long have I been out?” Roman asked, his voice cracking and dry. The low sound of a spitting fire and the pathetic flickering of the candles told Roman enough of what time of day – or night, rather – that he’d awoken during. It was then that the hunger and thirst hit fully, their impact jarring. His attention went straight to the jug of water beside Thomas, cups ready and waiting on the tray that also held food. Thomas made no move, however, to bring them to where Roman was lying on the King’s own bed. Roman only recognised it because of the horridly purple sheets. He suspected that he’d thrashed and turned so much in his sleep that he no longer recognised the materials drenched in sweat and tears and hopefully nothing else. “How long are you going to just stare at me?”

Thomas didn’t say anything – it seemed that he’d regressed into a form of communication only viable through frowning. 

Roman groaned as he heaved himself into a sitting position and then into a standing one, the world becoming liquid for the briefest of moments and black starting to creep around the edges of his vision. He suspected that he was doing a rather accurate impression of a drunk man as he stumbled over to the desk, pointedly moving himself around Thomas and grabbing the jug. He considered grabbing one of the glasses, for a moment – but gave up on that endeavour and began gulping the water straight from the jug, nearly moaning at the coolness in his throat compared to the searing heat of before.

“Two days.”

Roman paused in his quest of drowning himself with water. “It talks!”

Thomas looked like thunder, and Roman bit his lip as he reached for the plate of bread. “Virgil knocked you out the moment he recognised that he was spinning out of control. I felt him spiralling – all of the magic was being drawn out of me and back to him. My share of the magic still hasn’t fully regenerated.” 

Roman looked down with a trace of guilt. “Isn’t that a good thing? You haven’t had to hold it these past two days – I bet you’ve been feeling better.”

He liked this game – the game of talking, of making feeble jokes in order to hide from what he truly needed to talk about. But in this case, he didn’t want to remember the exact series of events that had led him here. 

Didn’t want to.

That first blast, the first strike of fear.

He could remember screaming, and then nothing much at all apart from a sudden pain at the base of his skull. 

Just a few seconds long, that memory – but the physical effect of fear had left its scarring deep. So impossibly deep that he felt sick, even now – even days later. So, even though he could remember that, he really, _really_ did not want to. He’d never been so scared in all of his life, and nothing had even happened. There had been nothing for him to be scared of – nothing except Virgil. Fear had just struck him in the chest and had become the only thing that ran in his blood, tore into his thoughts and wrecked him so entirely that he was glad Virgil had knocked him out – he doubted he could have survived the nightmares.

Roman looked down and realized that he’d stuffed his mouth full of bread in the middle of his musing, and yet Thomas hadn’t moved a single muscle. He swallowed thickly, standing up yet again and admiring the fact that his legs had returned to their faithful job of supporting him without shaking. 

It didn’t last long. 

Thomas had finally moved.

Moved quickly and without a single stumble, like water – slipping from the desk and swinging himself around to shove Roman against the wall hard enough that his newly un-shaking legs promptly started up again. “How dare you,” Thomas snapped as Roman’s breath fled from his lungs, “and how could you? You knew – you knew everything, and yet you still went ahead and wrecked things because you couldn’t be bothered to sit and think for a single moment!”

“Easy,” Roman breathed, trying not to think of another time where a different man had pinned him to a wall. During that occasion, he’d been utterly captivated by the feeling of Virgil’s skin on his, how Virgil’s lips had nearly split because he’d grimaced so hard. But during this one, he felt nothing other than Thomas’s arm pressing into his chest with enough force to hurt, or the blazing anger in Thomas’s human eyes. “Easy.”

“You have the nerve to tell me to take it _easy_?! You went and wrecked something far worse than the ballroom, simply because you didn’t think about anything other than yourself!” 

“I – What did I do, exactly?” Roman asked, trying not to sound impertinent but feeling an attitude rise, no matter his efforts. Thomas’s eyes flared in fury, and the King stepped backwards – allowing Roman to focus properly on how Thomas rubbed his chest, right above his heart. It was more than a nervous gesture – not that Roman had ever seen the idle movement before. Thomas’s torso caved into the movement as though his very being was centred around it.

Like it hurt.

“I felt it tear,” Thomas said, voice cold. “Not completely, but it tore. It hacked at the thread that Virgil and I have inside, the one that normally transfers magic and sometimes our thoughts and feelings. But what you did – it made it wrench and rip at itself.”

“But what did I do?” Roman asked. He’d never seen Thomas so alike ice, unwilling to even explain. 

“You goaded him into breaking our deal,” Thomas spat. “He may have done so unwittingly in the past – might have used his magic without my permission. But that was done so unknowingly, simply because his temper or emotions got the better of him. But you goaded him so much that he remembered that the deal forbade him from using the magic on someone that was mine, someone who I love, but just didn’t give a damn.”

Roman cursed himself – he hadn’t thought that anyone but himself would have gotten hurt because of his actions. He’d sworn that he’d never hurt the ones that he loved but had done so anyway. “The deal – is it broken, are you alright?”

“It’s not utterly broken, since Virge regained sense and knocked you out before he used the magic out of malice. But it’s not all there,” Thomas said, still rubbing at his chest – to the point near his heart where a string attaching him to another person used to be anchored. “You did that – how dare you do that to him?”

“I didn’t think that it would hurt him!” 

“No? You think that summoning that amount of magic would just be a walk in the park? You thought that being the carrier of fear would be easy and flawless?”

Roman felt a low buzzing in his ears, and he fervently hoped he wouldn’t faint. “I thought I could take it.”

Thomas laughed – but it was not the sound that Roman always wanted to hear. It was low, it was cruel, and it held such pain and sadness that it hurt to listen. “You think that you can take on the world, Roman. It does not mean, and never has meant, that you should. Or that you should even think about testing it.”

“If we do not test it, we never know for sure!”

Thomas looked like he was close to taking a swing at Roman. “Have you never thought about the consequences of what happens if we do test it, but it fails? No. You’ve never once thought about the fact that you can fail; you simply strive for success and believe that failure will never irk you. But in this case, failure has now hurt me, has blown apart my ballroom, has caused Virgil to fall into a coma and has made me think that forgiving you is never going to be an option.”

It was strange how a few single words strung together would make Roman’s heart contract.

Words failed him, but Thomas heard them anyway.

“He summoned too much, too quickly. I felt all of the magic that was within me vanish in a single moment – that was how I knew where he was, what was happening. I should have known that there was only one person who could have caused Virgil to be that mad.” Thomas didn’t bother shooting Roman a poisonous glare at that – just stared blankly at the bed that Roman had vacated. “He was losing control of it – knocked you out, had started to blow apart the hall. He panicked – he didn’t want to bring down the castle, not when the people he needs are here. So, he directed the magic to the one place that could protect everyone.”

“He used it on himself,” Roman whispered.

“I ran in to find a wrecked room, you under a shield of purple fire, and Virgil just lying there –“ Thomas’s voice broke, “lying there, practically dead. He should be dead – he would have been dead, destroyed, demolished if he were an ordinary person. He’d internalised it and honed that magic on himself, trying to protect the very person who had demanded it to be summoned.”

Roman didn’t ask how Thomas knew that he’d demanded it, had demanded Virgil to hit him with that power. “Where is he? I need to see him, to get him…”

Thomas continued as though he hadn’t heard. “I ran straight to you, and the purple shield evaporated to let me touch you. I think the magic recognised me – that’s why it let me in. Patton came just as I lifted you and said that he’d help Virgil as I tended to you.” Roman swallowed. “I was lucky to get you into bed before the visions started,” Thomas said. “The moment that Patton started doing whatever he was doing to try and help Virgil, visions started. I saw flashes of you, how close you had been to Virgil moments before everything went to hell. I saw flashes of – many things. And you were lucky that they started after I’d gotten you into bed, because if I had seen them before… I would have left you on some cold brick staircase for you to rot.”

“Where is he?”

Thomas’s mouth thinned. “You must be mad to think I would tell you.”

“Thomas,” Roman said, his heart playing games where it played dead and then jumped back into life. “You are the best part of me, and I understand that you will never forgive me for this. But I need to know where he is, I have to see him!”

Virgil was in a coma because of him. Because of a stupid delusion that Roman had founded on blind faith and an ego that had now been thoroughly and utterly disintegrated under Thomas’s frozen demeanour. He needed to see him – needed to touch him, to see if he could reach him from the near-death state that Virgil was trapped in.

“This is the worst part,” Thomas said, now seeming to be actively avoiding Roman’s pleading gaze. “You just don’t care about anything that isn’t to do with you. You only care about Virgil because you’re in love with him, and you only want to find him because it’ll help you with the guilt of your actions.” Roman stared wordlessly at his King as Thomas put his face in his hands and walked away, towards the balcony doors. He watched, wondering how to tell Thomas that it wasn’t true. But the King just looked out on his kingdom under the dim light of the stars as he dealt the final blow. “I don’t know why I ever thought that you’d care that you hurt me. You understand that I’m struggling to forgive you – that’s great. But the fact is that you just don’t care. And it is that, Roman, that has dealt me the worst pain of all.” 

“How did you know?” Roman murmured. “How did you know how I felt about him?”

Thomas stiffened. “Even before the visions confirmed it, I knew. I’ve always known. From the moment you met us and asked him to join us on our adventures, I suspected you’d be the storm that changed Virgil. Then it was the small things – how your eyes would notice something, and then go straight to him to see if he’d seen it too. How you would glare at Patton as Patton touched him. Your face can’t seem to hide your emotions – not from me.” 

“Thomas,” Roman said, trying yet again to find the information he sought. He would swear that he would win Thomas’s forgiveness back, in time – and yet, if Virgil was in trouble now, how could Thomas expect Roman’s mind to be anywhere else other than where he was? “Thomas, I swore to serve you for my entire life, but Virgil is in trouble right _now_.”

“Do you truly serve me? Or do you only serve yourself?”

It was Roman’s turn to stiffen and forbid his hand from rising to his sash. “I am yours.”

Thomas finally turned tortured eyes to Roman. “We both know that isn’t wholly true.”

“What can I do to convince you?” 

Thomas didn’t move as the next words tumbled from his mouth.

"It doesn't matter what I order you to do - I could say anything, and you wouldn't obey."

Roman's mouth went dry. "Try me."

Thomas's eyes blazed with malice. “Kiss me.”

Roman stared at Thomas, who was still staring across his kingdom. A moment passed. Roman opened his mouth to say something – anything to break the silence that was even more telling with every second that passed. “I-“

“You can’t. I know.” Thomas waved a hand behind him, dismissing Roman entirely. “And if you can’t obey that order, then you’ll obey my next one without doubt.” Roman didn’t bother to confirm it. They both knew it was true. “Get out.”

Without another word, Roman left his King’s chambers with questions in his heart and a lot more confusion than he’d woken up with. 

One thing remained clear, though.

Patton knew where Virgil was – and Patton would tell him. 

At least, that was the only thing still echoing through his skull a few minutes later as Roman flung himself down the stairs, thanking the fact that Thomas had dressed him whilst he’d been asleep. He slowed his steps down as he approached Patton’s door, glancing at the window and biting his lip at the darkness of the sky staring back at him. What truly stopped him in his tracks, though, were the murmured voices on the other side of Patton’s door.

Patton had often stayed at the castle – often enough that Thomas had designated him his own small bedroom on the same floor as Roman’s. But Roman was not aware that he often entertained visitors in that bedroom. 

“-horror, next, please.” 

“Such a pleasant emotion,” a voice that was undeniably Patton’s tutted back, a teasing tilt to his tone. 

Questions about Virgil dying on his lips and his curiosity piqued, Roman held his breath and chanced a glance in the crease between the door and the wall – to evaluate exactly if he could interrupt. There was a wide enough gap for him to see everything within quite clearly, but still limit his understanding to such an extent that he couldn’t help his mouth opening with the intent to ask those inside about what, exactly, was going on. 

Patton was glowing.

Literally glowing.

He was emanating an aura that bloomed around him much like a golden flower, a dancing light in the darkness. There was no candle within the room to light it – just Patton. Patton was sitting on his bed with crossed legs, shirtless. If Roman were in any reasonable state of mind, he would have immediately sworn – for Patton’s chest was covered in the tiniest of bruises, a trail leading from under his jaw to below the blanket that covered the rest of his nude form – a whisper of a memory having Roman consider that someone put them there for some form of revenge, for cheating at a bet. The golden light that was dancing from within him wisped off into nothing, curling and twisting to get back to him – as if even the light was sad to leave Patton alone.

But Patton was not alone.

Logan sat with his bare back presented to Roman in such a way that Roman couldn’t see his face – but Roman could see enough of his hair to know that it was a complete mess – the kind that took hours and another person’s hand running through it to make. 

Logan had his hands in Patton’s grip so that a few of the gold tendrils were winding into his skin. 

Roman was mute – couldn’t speak.

In the moments that passed, Logan shuddered – and his nudity made it all too easy for Roman to spot the hair on his arms raised, the way that his muscles had tensed in the sculpted back. Patton’s eyes scanned Logan’s with the anxious intensity that Roman had never once seen before. “Are you okay?” The light flickered out, and Roman had to clench his jaw shut to prevent himself from panicking in the sudden dark. There was enough light spared by the moon to see the rough outlines of the two men sitting in Patton’s bed, however.

Logan chuckled, although the sound was slightly off-beat. Patton immediately started to apologise, started to fluster, but Logan’s hand found its way out of its grip to cup the other man’s cheek. “Let’s try a nicer one, then. You can choose.”

Patton’s eyes closed as he leaned further into Logan’s touch. “Happiness is the loveliest, I think. We can try that?” Logan nodded, and Patton’s lips stretched into one of the widest grins that Roman had ever seen. Patton’s hands went up Logan’s chest to the spot that Roman assumed was right over Logan’s heart, and that bright aura flared once again into being.

In the moments that followed, there was only silence. Roman watched as Patton’s brow furrowed, obviously wondering about something to do with Logan’s expression. The silence became expectant, and then faintly cautious as Logan spoke. “Pat? Are you sure that you’re doing it right?”

Patton cocked his head. “Am I sure that the magic I’ve had since I was born is working?”

Logan huffed a reassuring breath, leaning back in a relaxed gesture – the most vulnerable position that Roman had seen him in. “It’s just – you were meant to make me feel happiness.”

Patton looked down at his own still-glowing fingertips. “That was happiness… Did you not feel that one?”

“No,” Logan said, and Roman was stunned to hear a smile and a trace of wonderment on his voice. “But it’s just – I always feel that way with you. That’s the thing that heats my chest when I look at you. I just didn’t know that it was called – that.”

Roman remembered enough of Logan’s problem. But Patton –

Patton had magic.

The magic to influence emotions – the magic to give certain feelings, the magic to make others feel whatever Patton so desired. 

Roman froze as a sudden thought struck him – had anything with Patton been real? Or had he simply wagged his fingers and manipulated those around him as he so desired? Was that precisely the reason why he had every single person he’d met wrapped around his little finger? 

He had only known magic as evil – as deceitful and something to be feared.

Fear had quite literally destroyed any walls that he’d held up around those that he loved – had seeded itself in his mind in connection with anything to do with magic. Roman wasn’t sure if that was an effect from being stabbed with Virgil’s magic, or if his mind now just automatically made the link between magic and the nature of evil. 

Perhaps it was that thought that sent Roman opening Patton’s door with a stony expression, a death sentence in his eyes. 

Patton saw him first, and his eyes flared just as his magic did – the bright aura swelling as Patton’s own emotions spiked. Logan breathed a warning to him, his hands rising to grip Patton’s before swinging his head around to behold their visitor in the dead of night. 

“Roman!” Patton said, and Roman blinked. It wasn’t fear that was the emotion behind that voice – it was relief. Or had Patton influenced that, as well? “You’re awake, you’re alright!”

Logan reached over to the foot of the bed and hauled another blanket over himself, a blush storming its way onto his face. “Are you not aware that knocking is appropriate and encouraged?” Logan said, anger freezing his tone – so vastly different from the warm murmur of before. The man stood, hastily wrapping the blanket around his waist so that Roman could only see the trail of hair on his lower stomach leading down to it. 

“You have it,” Roman said, his voice holding a hint of steel that normally rose in response to fear. “You’ve been controlling everyone this entire time?” 

Patton’s face fell as he cried a harsh “no!” in response, but Logan didn’t move – not until Roman met his furious gaze and stayed there. Logan’s hand flung out openly to Patton, who fell silent immediately, scrabbling for what Roman assumed was a candle and a match. “Roman, please, I’d never use it for that reason, never!”

“Why do I not believe you?” Roman asked, stepping forwards. Logan growled, stepping forward so that their chests were practically touching. Roman hated, suddenly, the fact that Logan was taller than him. 

“You are going to wait,” Logan hissed, before grabbing Roman’s forearm with enough force to bring a lesser man to tears and quite literally hauling him from the room. Logan shut the door in Roman’s face with a sharp snap – and Roman let him. 

It was only a few minutes later that had Logan opening the door again, wearing clothes the colour of a storm and a matching expression, only noticeable because he was grabbing a lit candlestick in one hand, neatly shutting the door behind him too quick for Roman to glimpse the magic-wielder inside. 

“Walk.” 

Roman did – only because he was in far too weak a state to fight. And even if he had been on top-form, he knew, there was something about Logan tonight. Tonight, Logan would win. Not because of any handicap that had befallen Roman, but from the emotional charge that lingered underneath that lithe body. “You understand _nothing_ and yet you have the nerve to barge in and insult my – Patton.” 

“I understand that he has magic,” Roman said. “I understand that magic is evil.”

Logan fixed him with a glare, even as they started walking through a series of corridors that would lead to Roman’s own bedroom. “Not all magic is evil, you ignorant fool. It is a mere tool – and in the hands of those that are evil, it is used as such. But do you really think, even for a second, that Patton has an evil bone in his body?”

“He could be manipulating you, even now. How do you know that anything is real, with him? How can you know that you love him, knowing that he could be making you feel that in that very moment?” 

“First of all, I do not need to defend Patton for you to feel better about your own prejudices,” Logan told him, his jaw set. “But I will. You don’t deserve it, but Patton is sitting alone in a bed, probably weeping because one of his dearest friends is so entirely set on detesting him for no other crime than being born. And I will not allow that. His magic can only be administered through direct touch; if there is no touch, he cannot influence anything. He can sense the emotions of another person – if they’re sad, or happy, or lonely. But he can do nothing to change it unless he can touch them and keep touching them.” 

Roman’s head began to pound as thoughts began to collide – and it was the extraordinary volume of their collisions that made one thing clear.

His fear of Patton was simply in connection with the fact he had magic – and magic had forever been tainted for him.

“He was touching you,” Roman said, massaging his temples – a gesture that Logan marked. 

Logan nodded, a hint of an innuendo-filled smile rising to his lips just as Roman’s door emerged from the shadows. “I asked him to. He was helping me to understand emotions – understand my own. He is Patton – he’s only ever helped everyone that needed it. Surely you know that?”

“A few minutes ago, I did,” Roman agreed, the pain in his head refusing to leave. “But I doubt you can sway me right now – I think there’s something blocking me. In here,” he said, gesturing to his head. “I’ll work on it later.” Logan’s eyes glinted, probably to argue that _‘no, you will work on it now’_ but Roman hissed a low breath of pain. “Where is Virgil? Surely you know? I was going to ask Patton, but now when I think of him, I get this surge of fear again, like I was back in the ballroom –“

Logan’s jaw tensed, probably in response to Patton’s name on Roman’s lips. “Virgil is stable; he’s not going to get worse. You are in no state to see him.”

“If he were Patton,” Roman said, “what would you do?” 

“If it were Patton, I would never have asked him to do anything that would hurt him,” Logan said, and it was the angle of his eyebrows that told Roman the first hint that he was treading on very dangerous ice. “And if it were still Patton regardless, I would tear down this world and the next until I reached him.”

“Exactly,” Roman said, pain forgotten in the flash of relief. “Please, tell me.”

“No,” Logan said, reaching around Roman to open the door to his bedroom. “The difference between you and I, Roman, is that I would tear this world down to reach Patton in the next one. But you are destroying this world on your own, despite the fact that Virgil is still in this world. And if you’re not careful, if you don’t stop and take time to think things through, you’re going to burn everything. So, sleep. There is no one in this castle that will lead you to Virgil so that you can continue to tear this world to shreds.”

Roman took a breath in – but Logan gave him the tiniest shake of the head, signalling that he would be happy to argue his case all night – but Logan would win. 

“He’s stable. Do you promise me that?” 

“For the foreseeable future,” Logan said, dipping his head as Roman stepped into the darkness of his bedroom alone. “I swear it. But, Roman – a warning. I will say this as many times as it takes to get the information through your thick skull,” Logan said, his eyes glittering with the threat, leaning closer. “If you even think of hurting Patton, I will do anything to ensure that you end up as ash.” 

Roman considered this, before giving Logan his best attempt at a smile – regardless of the headache bouncing around in his skull. 

“If I did that, I’d both deserve and want my fate.”


	19. 9 Days until Burning

Roman woke a few hours later to discover the headache all but disappeared and a weak light easily bypassing the threadbare curtains into his room. He lay in the narrow cot for a few minutes, testing a few thoughts in his mind and evaluating whether or not the migraine would make a reappearance if he attempted to rise.

He soon found that entirely boring and decided to get up anyway, washing himself and throwing on his finer sets of clothes for no reason other than a fresh mindset. Half a thought had him running his hand down the sash, and another moment had him setting up the resolve to help with a few issues.

And that was how, early in the afternoon, he was leaning against a pillar just outside the kitchens and closing his eyes for a few moments, depending on his ears to listen for a certain set of footsteps that he was confident he could recognise by sound. 

He found that he could.

“Hey.” 

Roman didn’t blame Patton for the alarmed look – or the look of faint upset that he tried so hard to hide. For magic-wielder with complete control of his emotions, Patton certainly couldn’t hide his own very well. 

Patton swallowed, before smiling the most fragile smile that Roman had ever seen – as though he were afraid that Roman would crush everything, right then and there. “Hey, Roman.”

Roman inclined his head and offered his arm to Patton, looking out the window to where the pale winter sun was shining. “Walk with me?”

Patton looked at his proffered arm with something akin to alarm. “You trust me to touch you?”

The complete lack of venom or nastiness still stung – because the fact that Patton had meant it as a genuine question showed how far Roman had hurt him last night. “Patton, I trust you with my life,” Roman said, winking at him vivaciously. “Now come and get some fresh air with me.”

“We could just open a window,” Patton muttered, attempting some level of childishness to cover up what Roman could only assume was surprise. “We don’t have to go outside.”

“I’ve told you before, the outside is better than the inside.”

“Completely false,” Patton replied, although he finally accepted Roman’s arm neatly and began allowing Roman to lead him through the corridors. “The inside has warmth.”

“The outside has nice scenery.”

“The inside has comfy seats.”

“Outside has flowers.”

“It’s winter!” Patton cried, scandalised. “There are no flowers!”

Roman huffed a sigh and allowed Patton to change their course, undoubtedly heading towards one of the lounge areas with a fireplace in the near radius. “I owe you an apology, Patton.”

He heard Patton’s sudden intake of breath. “No, you don’t. Of course you’d be shocked at me having magic – I’ve kept it hidden for so long, it’s my fault that you reacted like you did… And just when you’d woken up from being knocked out, too!”

“Patton,” Roman said, squeezing his arm lightly until his tangent ran silent. “You don’t get to accept the blame for my actions. Seeing that you had magic was a shock, yes – but when I really thought about it, it was obvious, you know? Of course you would have magic that’s gold and gorgeous. I’m jealous.”

“But I shouldn’t have hidden it from you,” Patton insisted, turning into a small window seat and collapsing at one end, his brown eyes wide as he watched Roman follow suit at the other end and draw his knees up to his chest. “I’ve wanted to tell you a million times before. Do you remember when you were so frustrated that you walked out on us, once? After Logan had been ignorant about the homeless?” Roman nodded. “I was going to offer you help in calming down,” Patton admitted, looking down at his knees. “But you dealt with your anger on your own, and I thought that you’d hate me if I offered again – you know, because maybe you’d see it as an insult, or something.”

“I’m not trying to excuse myself from my actions,” Roman said, after a moment of silence, “but the fear I felt in response to realizing that you had magic – I don’t think that it was entirely there just because I distrust it.”

“You think that it’s an after-effect of being struck by Virgil’s magic?” Patton mused, his eyes fluttering closed as he thought about it. “I mean, do you still feel that same fear hours later?”

“Not at all,” Roman said. “It’s like the fear wore off – I realized something was off the moment that I got a headache after thinking about it for too long.”

“I suppose it’s plausible,” Patton said. “And I’m relieved that you don’t hate me. I really thought I’d ruined everything.”

“Ruining everything is my job, sweetheart,” Roman winked, ignoring the pit of grief that tightened in his stomach. “No one in their right minds could really hate you. Let alone me – after all, haven’t we always been the dearest of friends?”

Patton smiled then, a hint of sunlight in his eyes. “The best of friends.”

“’Dearest’ sounds nicer.”

“’Best’ is more direct.”

“Since when have you ever cared about directness?” Roman asked in a strangled voice. “Logan’s spreading his habits to you!” Patton blushed, then – the colour of his cheeks exaggerated by the paleness of the sun shining in from the window. “I caught you both at a very weird time in the night,” Roman started, gently, to ask. 

Patton hummed. “We’d both woken up about an hour before you came in – Logan had a nightmare and he was curious about the emotions that he was feeling, so he asked me to help.”

“He woke up in his own house and travelled all of the way to the castle to get your help with something that could have waited until the morning?”

Roman was not entirely a fool; he knew exactly what Patton was going to say. However, acting utterly clueless had always amused him. And the reward of watching Patton blush even further just added to his own entertainment. 

“He woke up next to me,” Patton said, pouting as he scowled at Roman. “Since that’s where he fell asleep, too.”

Roman couldn’t help the grin that spread onto his face. “Why on earth would Logan fall asleep beside you, Patton? And I assume that your state of undress was purely for innocent reasons, and that those bruises down your body were definitely not from Logan kissing his way downwards -”

Patton grabbed his face with both hands, deliberately looking out of the window now. “You can’t make me say these things aloud, Roman!”

“But I want to hear it,” Roman crooned, delighted. “Just to convince myself that I’m not going crazy, please tell me just how in love with Logan you are.”

A quiet screech came from Patton in response to the words, and Roman laughed at Patton miming headbutting the window. The little screech then turned into a full-blown scream as someone interrupted from around the corner.

“Yes, Patton, why don’t you tell us just how in love you are?”

“Good lord,” exclaimed Roman, releasing the pommel of his sword and relaxing further into his seat at the sight of Logan. “Please tell me that you don’t have teleportation magic or some nonsense.” 

“I assure you that if I did, I’d be using it for much greater purposes than eavesdropping on conversations like these.”

“You liar,” Roman teased, watching as the high cheekbones on Logan’s face began to brighten in a flush. “But I’m glad you don’t have magic, otherwise I’d feel utterly jealous at being left out.” 

“I don’t mean to alarm either of you,” Patton’s small voice said, and Roman looked at him to see that Patton had somehow managed to ball himself up into a small crumple on the floor – not even on the seat. “But I am contemplating death right now. It must be easier than living through this mortification.” 

Roman scoffed, leaning down to heave the unwilling man to his feet. Patton refused to release his balled-up form, however, and so Roman was left struggling to lift the lump known as Patton on his own. “At least you know that he’s completely in love with you too, you fool.” 

Patton wailed again, whereas Logan merely released a lengthy sigh. “Thomas has requested Patton’s presence, so I did initially come to drag him up to his quarters myself,” Logan said, distastefully. “But since you’ve already got a good handle on him, Roman, you can do the honours.”

Roman shot him a look of poison, heaving Patton higher until the man gave up and weakly put his own feet beneath him. It didn’t stop him from leaning completely over Roman’s shoulder, moaning at the state of his destroyed pride. “I needed to speak to Thomas, anyway,” Roman huffed, lifting Patton into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and starting an odd shuffling manoeuvre towards the stairs. “Logan, you can’t abandon either of us now – come with us.”

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you like this,” Logan said, with such a tone that Roman could almost hear him rolling his eyes. “After all, this is a scene straight out of the circus – I wouldn’t miss this entertainment for anything.”

Indeed, Logan let out many sniggers deliberately at the right volume so that only Roman would be able to hear them on his way up the stairs. “Care to help?” Roman panted, pausing on the landing between the fourth and fifth floors. 

“Perhaps if Patton asks nicely,” Logan said, his voice dipping into a deeper tone. 

“Patton, I don’t care if you haven’t gotten over being embarrassed,” Roman said, gently pinching the man’s side. “If you don’t ask him for help, I will fall back down these stairs and take you with me.”

“Good,” Patton said, morosely. “The end is near.”

“Pat,” Roman tried again, tugging him. “You may want to die, but then you’ll lose whatever suits that you and Logan were betting on a while ago.” Patton’s body stiffened. “Did you really go through all of that exercise just to lose that bet now?”

Logan stopped sniggering and looked back at Patton over his shoulder. “If you walk on your own from here, I’ll allow your obscene suggestion of having a chocolate cake at the event.”

The next moment, Roman’s entire right side was left feeling a lot lighter as Patton practically skipped up the stairs, calling down the stairs with a soft, victorious coo. “Come on, hurry up, we can’t leave the King waiting! And Logan, no takebacks, we’ve decided on chocolate cake and not your vanilla, you cannot go back!”

Logan nodded, mostly to himself, and followed Patton up the stairs with his hands casually in his pockets, leaving Roman with his mouth agape. 

“So, you’ve decided on the suits and the cake,” Roman huffed, catching up to walk alongside Logan with shaking legs. Patton’s distant and jubilant humming could be heard, even if the man himself was out of sight, speeding on ahead. “I assume for a special sort of event?”

“Are you actually as stupid as you look?” Logan asked, although the quiet happiness on his face took all bite away from the question.

“I suppose that depends on how stupid I look,” Roman answered. “I want to say that I am as clever as I am dashingly handsome, but apparently one needs to be stupid in order to be brave – and I’d choose bravery over cleverness any day.” 

Logan didn’t bother dignifying Roman’s scramble of words with an answer. “If you insist that you are clever, then you already know perfectly well what event we’re planning for.” 

“But neither of you are wearing engagement rings,” Roman said, holding up his hands in something of a retreat as Logan shot him a glowering look that confirmed his theory. 

“If you must know,” Logan said, pausing at the top of the stairs to catch his breath, “we’re fighting about that particular detail as well.” 

Roman raised an eyebrow. “About the engagement?”

“About who will propose to who.”

Roman’s lips twisted into a grin. “Propose to each other if it’s that big of a deal. Or make him think that he gets to be the one proposing to you, so that your proposal will surprise him.”

“The day I take advice from you is the day that hell begins to freeze over,” Logan told him sincerely, but Roman knew him well enough to spot the consideration on his face, even before Logan muttered a quiet, “thank you.” Not wanting to mortify Logan and show that he heard, Roman allowed himself a small smile and continued to where Patton was waiting for them outside of Thomas’s room, looking faintly troubled. “Pat?” Logan asked, his hand grazing Patton’s as they reached him. “What’s wrong?”

“Tell him that I’m on my way and that I’ll be there in a moment,” Patton said, giving Logan a look that Roman heavily suspected only Logan could truly decipher it. Logan glanced at Roman before heading inside, closing the door neatly behind him with a sharp snap. 

“Patton?” Roman asked, before Patton gestured for him to follow and led him a little ways away from the guards outside Thomas’s door. 

“You were the last person to see him last night, right?” Patton asked, glancing between Roman and the door. 

“I think so,” Roman agreed cautiously. “Unless Thomas has a secret lover that none of us know about –“

“Don’t joke about that,” Patton said, any and all amusement washed from his face. “What did you two talk about, last night? What went wrong?”

“Wrong?” Roman repeated, before concentrating. “I can’t remember much – it’s all blurry.”

“Virgil’s magic must have made you obsessed with finding its source,” Patton sighed, talking to himself. “You couldn’t think about anything other than finding Virgil, right? And that wore off after a while?”

“I still want to see him,” Roman protested, faintly stung at Patton’s words. “Logan told me that he was stable, and that no one would allow me to see him anyway. I fell asleep almost instantly after that.” 

“But it’s not an obsession now,” Patton explained, looking at Roman without any traces of pity – which Roman greatly appreciated. “Last night, somehow, you managed to really hurt Thomas’s feelings. I felt it outside the door – he’s hurting. Badly.”

“But I can’t remember what I did,” Roman said, his mind working furiously. “All I remember is wanting to find Virgil, wanting to help him –“

“Virgil’s magic is strong enough to override all rational thought,” Patton mused. “Can you not remember anything that Thomas said to you? Anything that you said to him?”

Roman opened his mouth to say something, to explain that somehow, he couldn’t – 

But then –

A flash.

Thomas’s face, still covered in shadow despite the moonlight, looking out across his kingdom even as he said the two words that had set his eyes blazing.

_Kiss me._

Roman hadn’t even noticed it – had merely dismissed it, thinking that Thomas had said it just because he had known it was the one thing that Roman could not morally fulfil. His hunger to pursue Virgil – inspired by the very man’s magic – had caused his mind to dismiss anything that was not relevant to Virgil, to finding Virgil, to discussing Virgil.

Roman had brushed the request under the rug, hadn’t even thought about whether there was a deeper meaning, and it hadn’t even been his own actions. It had been the actions caused by the aftereffects of being struck with a blade of pure fear.

Patton stiffened, perhaps sensing the torrent of emotions that Roman was going through. 

Was Thomas feeling sadness because of Roman’s own actions, or was it a deeper feeling of heartbreak, because Roman had entirely and wholeheartedly rejected his request without meaning to do so? 

“Patton,” Roman said, his voice hoarse. “What, exactly, is Thomas feeling?” 

If Patton told him it was mere anger and sadness because of Roman’s own stupidity rolled into one, Roman could deal with that – he would go and beg forgiveness, start making it back up to the King. If it were heartache…

Roman didn’t know how to deal with that.

“It’s not for me to tell you,” Patton said, looking at the floor. “But I think you might suspect it.”

“If I asked you,” Roman asked, his voice tight, “if Thomas loved me, what would you say?”

Patton didn’t move for a few moments, before cocking his head with animalistic focus towards Thomas’s room. “Something’s changed. Tension just reached for the sky.”

Roman tore his mind away from the utter chaos of his thoughts and looked back at the room. Patton was not lying; Roman didn’t even need the power of feeling emotions to feel the way that the atmosphere had shifted. He looked around to pin Patton down with his gaze and demand an answer, ask for help with helping Thomas, but he was staring at a wall; Patton had already taken off, walking quickly to the doors. 

“Patton!” Roman called, speeding after him. Patton shot him a faintly panicked look before opening the doors and hanging back just a moment until he’d caught up, and they walked into the room together.

Thomas and Logan were in the centre of the room, the latter with his mouth hanging open as though he were about to start yelling and the former with his face red. 

“Logan, you’ve been in this room for a few seconds,” Roman said, feeling Patton’s hand slip into his own as Patton shuddered – probably feeling the anger reverberate in his bones and needing an anchor in reality. “Literally, a few seconds. What could possibly have happened in a few seconds?”

Thomas took off his crown and tossed it carelessly to the ground, where it clanged loudly against the stone. Ignoring the way Roman and Patton both flinched, Thomas pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and glared at Logan. “Yes, Logan, what possibly could have happened?”

Roman walked further into the room, sending a glance to Patton so that the other man would close the door behind them. He tried to get Thomas to look at him – stared at him for long enough that it was impossible for Thomas to not know what Roman was trying to do. But the way that Thomas remained stubbornly glaring at Logan informed Roman that he was being ignored.

It was fair enough – more than fair enough. He’d brushed aside Thomas’s pain as though it hadn’t mattered – and under magic’s effect, it hadn’t mattered. Roman was ashamed of that; that magic had managed to completely and utterly shift his priorities to its own whim. But now that its lingering traces had disappeared, the full weight of Thomas’s sadness had wedged itself in Roman’s own heart. 

“Calm down,” Patton said, moving to stand beside Logan and giving him a lecture-like gaze. He made no move to touch Logan – because Logan would have hated to be controlled in this situation, Roman realized. When he was only with Patton would Logan allow himself to loosen his control. 

Not that Logan looked like he had any control – his face was scrunched with fury, and his eyes were glittering behind his glasses. “You’re being foolish, and you know it,” he told Thomas, who made no other move than to clench his fists – as though he were restraining himself from throttling Logan.

“Don’t you talk to Thomas that way,” Roman spat instinctively, stepping between the two and glaring daggers at the taller male. Thomas’s hand found itself at Roman’s elbow, the King pulling Roman out of the way.

The touch, though, was grounding.

That’s how they’d always functioned – small, idle touches that assured them of their own being. 

And even though Thomas was only touching Roman to stop himself from punching Logan’s lights out, Roman was glad for it nonetheless.

“You cannot refuse the one solution because it’s not logical,” Thomas said, the control of his voice slipping. 

“It’s not just illogical, it’s nearly suicidal,” Logan retorted.

“Patton,” Roman commented, trying his best to act nonchalant despite the aura of murder, “are you sure that you can’t just tone this mood down?”

Patton held up his hands so that Roman could see and waggled his fingers. “I can’t do anything unless I’m touching them.”

“Logan,” Roman sighed. “Thomas. For no reason whatsoever, would you mind just coexisting until you both touch Patton so that both of you could act a little more decently?” 

“You told him about the magic, Patton?” Thomas said, eyeing Patton apprehensively. “That was brave.” 

Patton shrugged, shooting Roman a grin. Roman sighed. “He didn’t tell me,” he said, looking at Thomas and nearly shivering with relief that the man was _finally_ looking at him. “I kind of interrupted something and discovered it for myself.” 

“You barged in without thinking of the consequences,” Thomas said, his voice flat. “I wonder why that sounds familiar.”

The room held its breath.

“I deserve that,” Roman said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “Guilty, as charged. I’m trying to get better at it, though.”

With that small sentence, the tension in the room flattened. Thomas was staring at Roman as though he were looking at an alien, and Logan was breathing carefully in such a way that Roman knew he was physically trying to calm himself down. “In Roman’s defence,” Patton said, raising a hand, “he still had a lot of fear magic in him last night, so his actions weren’t exactly his own.”

“Don’t defend me, Pat,” Roman said, giving him a small smile nonetheless. “I may not have been aware of what I was saying exactly, but I still said them.”

Thomas now looked faintly panicked. “Do you remember what was said to you?”

For a beat, Roman was again in this exact room – a few hours prior.

_Kiss me._

“No,” Roman said, keeping his eyes set on Thomas. He prayed that Patton couldn’t recognise the lie – hoped that lying didn’t bring up a specific emotion. “I remember the general tone of voices, but I can’t remember words, really. But I am aware that I hurt you – and believe me, Thomas, I am sorry for it. I never wanted to hurt you, but somehow keep managing to do the one thing I swore to myself I’d never do again after the first time. I’ll probably somehow do it again through some idiotic mistake – but never doubt that I’d never even consider breathing if I knew it would lead to hurting you in some way.”

The look of relief on Thomas’s face was soul-crushing.

And the biggest clue to the answer that Roman had asked Patton mere minutes ago.

“Why did you summon me, Thomas?” Patton said, drawing both Thomas and Roman’s attention back to him. Logan had, at some point, walked off to the side to lean carefully against the door, crossing his arms as he did so. “Did you need something?”

“You already know,” Thomas answered, his voice sounding hollow. 

Patton’s eyes went straight to the corner of the room, and he bit his lip. Roman, with his heart in his mouth, turned to look. As he knew Virgil would be, he was in his own bed – in the corner of the room that he shared with Thomas. “Was he always here?” Roman asked, glancing to his side.

Thomas nodded. “You didn’t see him – didn’t look.” Roman wracked his brain to think – surely, he must have checked Virgil’s own bed? But he had no memory left of the night before that was not fogged or covered in a thin veil of mist. 

“I think my idiocy is getting worse,” Roman whispered, before following Patton to Virgil’s side. It was a mark of how furious Logan was that he didn’t even offer a sarcastic comment back, didn’t even move from his position at the door. 

Patton knelt on the floor beside the bed, and Roman swore as he looked down on Virgil.

Or what was left of him.

The man looked like a corpse.

Barely any colour, barely breathing. 

Patton, with his fingers alight with a golden glow, pressed his hand to the forehead that looked as though it had been doused in sweat. “Patton – can you heal him?” Roman was distantly aware of the question coming from his mouth but wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to make his mouth move. 

“My magic has always allowed me to touch him,” Patton murmured, closing his eyes as the wisps of light began dancing their way to Virgil’s motionless body. “Any magic user can touch each other without feeling direct effects; it forms a shield. And technically, fear is an emotion – I should be able to alleviate it.”

“But?” Roman was aware that neither Thomas nor Logan were asking the questions – perhaps allowing him to sort himself out. Or perhaps because they already knew the answers. 

“But,” continued Patton, the golden lights at his fingertips winking out, “he’s getting worse. His magic acts more powerfully every second. And he was so much more powerful than I am. My magic can be used, at full blast, for roughly fifteen minutes before I would have to – recharge. His magic – his magic is world-ending. There’s no comparison.”

“There _is_ a comparison,” snapped Thomas, from somewhere to Roman’s right. 

“Absurd,” Logan snapped back. 

“There is one person with enough magic to potentially get him back,” Thomas said, turning to look at Roman with stark eyes. Because Thomas knew that Roman would understand – would understand his desperation to get Virgil back. Logan wouldn’t – would calculate the risks and take the losses.

But Virgil was a loss that Thomas was not willing to take. He was a loss that Roman wouldn’t allow the world to suffer.

“You want to invite Deceit into this castle just to heal him?” Logan said, his voice a blade. “You know there’ll be a cost.”

Roman knew what it was all for, then.

What all of this adventure had been for – why he’d been brought to these people, why he’d taken Virgil’s hand in the swamp one day.

It made it very easy for him to say the next few words.

“I’ll pay it.”

Patton looked at Roman, then, with a trace of pity. “You don’t know what the cost will be, Roman.” 

“He’s wanted me to agree to a deal desperately enough,” Roman said, not moving his stare from Thomas, who merely stared right back. Unflinching steel – both of them. “If healing Virgil is the cost that I demand, I’ll do whatever he wants me to do.”

“You’re both going to tear this world apart,” Logan hissed, coming forward to stand in front of Patton. “Can you not see the absolute madness of this plan? Roman, you will do no such thing.”

Roman stiffened his resolve. “Logan – I respect you. You are smart and strong and everything I hate to admire but admire it anyway. But even though I respect you… You are not my King. There is only one man in here who I will obey if he tells me not to do it.” 

Thomas didn’t look surprised.

He wasn’t wearing his crown – it was still on the floor, forgotten. 

But Roman thought that Thomas had never looked more like a King than he did in that moment.

“If I told you not to take that deal, are you telling me that you wouldn’t?” Thomas asked. 

Roman didn’t hesitate as he placed his hand on his sash – right above his heart. “If you told me not to, I’d just have to find another way.”

Thomas smiled – a small smile, a smile that echoed with sadness, but a smile nonetheless. The start of something. “We don’t have time to find another option, Logan.”

Logan hissed. “I’m going to find another way.”

“And until you find that other way,” Thomas said, turning away from Virgil’s body and walking out of the room, “it’s settled.”

“You’re asking Roman to take the deal?” Logan said, turning to follow him in something of a rage.

“Of course not,” Thomas said, and Roman blinked in shock. Thomas didn’t bother looking back as he dealt the final blow.

“I am the one that will take the deal.”


	20. 1 Day until Burning

Roman stormed into the library with books spilling out of his arms and a full bag of dirty clothes, ignoring the wrathful looks of the librarians as he dumped the bundles onto the long table Logan had chosen to adopt. 

“Nothing,” he spat, watching as Logan blearily looked up from a map. “Absolutely no sign of him anywhere. Please tell me that you’ve fared better.” 

Logan threw the map onto the table alongside the pages of notes that Roman had relieved himself of, which was uncharacteristic of the male – anything with ink and paper was practically holy for the man. But there he was, slumped into a chair with dead eyes and a shirt that looked like it had been worn for a long while. 

“Alright,” Roman conceded, trembling as he sat down on the bench and tried not to fall apart. “I can tell by your face that it’s going just fantastic here as well.” 

“How can this library contain the knowledge of this kingdom and yet not give me the answer that I need,” Logan seethed in response, rubbing his temples with enough force that the skin promptly went bright red. 

“I’ve put out red alerts all throughout the kingdom,” Roman said. “And I scanned the radius of the kingdom within the sixty-mile radius, as you said. There’s just _nothing_.” Indeed, his horse was probably collapsed back at the stable after Roman had ridden the poor thing constantly for the past week, searching desperately for any lingering traces of Deceit. 

“He surely knows that we’re looking for him,” Logan contemplated, but his eyes were dead – perhaps he’d been feverishly hoping that Roman’s search would have yielded results, as Roman had hoped about Logan’s. “At least that might convince him to at least check why. We can’t know how long that will take, though – and Virgil’s getting worse.”

“I checked on him before I came here,” Roman agreed, not entirely truthfully. He’d known that Virgil had been moved down the corridor from Patton, in one of the small rooms ordinarily used by some of the wealthier servants. He’d blitzed his way straight there, only to be halted at the door by one of the matronly healers – a woman with grey eyes and dark hair streaked with starlight. She’d merely shook her head, telling him that he “did not want to see what was within if he didn’t want more nightmares”. Naturally, he’d snuck a peak within – only to indeed confirm that Virgil had been breathing. 

Somehow, the man managed to look worse than he had merely a week ago – a mere glance told him that. 

After relieving his stomach of what little he’d scrambled to get for breakfast in a toilet next door, he’d continued his warpath to the library – where he’d known Logan would be, toiling away to find another way. A way that didn’t require relying on a crazed criminal.

“Patton is doing all he can,” Logan said, closing his eyes for a heartbeat. “It’s exhausting him, this constant use of his magic and the immediate need to recharge. He can’t keep doing it.” 

“How long does he think Virgil has?” Roman asked, allowing himself to collapse into a chair and begin to move the notes that had guided his travel around into ordered piles. 

Logan’s mouth tightened. “He thought he had around a few days – about a week ago.” 

Roman heard his own heart falter, before the pounding started again in his ears. “He could have died, and I wouldn’t have been here to –“ 

“But he hasn’t died,” Logan snapped, interrupting Roman’s slow but sure descent into hysteria. “He’s still here, and we need to find a way to keep him here long enough for Deceit to come.” 

“You’ve given up on your other method, then?” Roman asked, rubbing his eyes. 

“Desperation makes a man do things he knows he’ll regret later,” Logan muttered, shaking himself and pulling a book from the staggering pile behind him roughly the size of Roman’s head. “But he does it anyway.” 

“I hate it when you admit that you’re only human,” Roman sighed, before gesturing towards the pile of books. Logan didn’t even begin to question him as he passed the next book on the pile towards him – a mark of how exhausted he must have been, not to insult Roman. Not to throw the “I didn’t know you could read,” at him. 

“You haven’t asked about Thomas,” Logan said, after a long while – enough time passing for the librarians to begrudgingly prepare lanterns for them so that they could continue their research into magic. 

“I don’t need to,” Roman replied. “If he isn’t in here with us, he’s still out there searching.”

Thomas had taken a larger radius to search than Roman had – meaning that he’d be further out, for a much longer time. Roman hadn’t bothered to argue – not when his King still hadn’t decided if it was alright to start looking him in the eyes again. Roman wished that he could say that he hadn’t thought about Thomas – wished that he’d been entirely focussed on his task of finding Deceit to save the man who owned his heart. And for the parts where it had mattered, he had been.

But when he’d been alone on the road, forcing his exhausted steed to run, those treacherous thoughts had swamped his mind. 

_Kiss me._

He’d told Thomas that he couldn’t remember anything that the King had said to him – and that was the truth, for all of the lines except that one. Roman didn’t know why it was only those two words that he could remember as clear as water – didn’t understand why his memory had obscured everything else but Thomas’s face as he’d said it. 

He’d lied to Thomas and hadn’t told him about it – to preserve what their relationship was, what it always had been. Because if he admitted that he remembered the order, he’d have to tell Thomas what his reply was – and Roman didn’t like to think what either of their reactions would be. 

It might shatter everything. 

*

The heavy door to the library opened, and Roman’s world spun.

He peeled his face from the page of the book, his mouth dry and his neck aching as he considered the odd position that he’d fallen asleep in. He shot a glance to Logan, who raised his stare only for a moment to Roman and raised an exhausted eyebrow. “You let me sleep?” Roman croaked, wiping at his eyes and cheeks, both of which were damp. 

“I tried to wake you up, but you were too far gone,” Logan said. “I thought you’d probably be better company asleep, anyway.” 

“Ass.”

“Twit.”

“Both of you look like you’ve been trampled by horses,” another voice chimed in, and Roman watched as a tray of food was placed in the middle of the table between him and Logan. “And that’s being kind.”

“You,” Roman moaned as he grabbed at a piece of bread and pointed the wedge at Patton, “are an angel.” 

Patton smiled, but it – and Roman had to blink – didn’t suit him. The smile pushed the hollows of his eyes into greater view and allowed his cheeks to seem gaunter, sharper. As Patton sat himself next to Logan, Roman met stares again with the taller male, who had worry etched into every stern line of his face. 

Logan was, unsurprisingly, right. Patton couldn’t keep doing whatever he was doing to try and help Virgil. It wasn’t that he couldn’t keep doing it – but it was that he was killing himself doing it. 

“I didn’t realize you were back, Roman,” Patton said, and Roman nearly cried at the man’s attempt to sound upbeat. “I must have been asleep when you went to check in on Virgil.” 

“I sped back as soon as I could,” Roman said, glancing outside – to the utter darkness of the world beyond. “I couldn’t bare to stick outside during this winter.”

“I thought you liked the outside,” Patton teased, standing up to reach for some food – but stumbled, his eyes closing as though dizziness had physically assaulted him. Logan reached for him, just in time to pull the male softly onto his lap, catching him in his fall. Without saying a word, Roman prepared a mug of the steaming soup Patton had brought for his lover and passed it neatly to Logan, who nodded his thanks.

Logan pressed the hot mug into Patton’s hand, his other hand encircling Patton’s lower back – stabilising him against Logan’s own body. “Come, love,” Logan murmured, guiding the mug to Patton’s lips. 

“It was meant for you,” Patton weakly protested, but Logan chuckled and stubbornly held the mug still until Patton yielded and drank. Only until he was satisfied that Patton was stable holding the mug on his own did Logan reach for another mug, which Roman readily passed to him to prevent him leaning too far and upsetting the precarious pair. 

Roman merely picked up the book that had suspiciously damp pages and began throwing himself into reading again, forcing his brain to interpret the ink figures into their corresponding words. Every few minutes, he glanced up – just to smile at Patton, or stick his tongue out at Logan. 

Patton, however, had long since fallen asleep against Logan’s shoulder. It wasn’t a doze – it was the kind of sleep that took the time that it wanted and wouldn’t settle for a minute less. Logan had placed both mugs – Patton’s was empty, his had only been drained halfway – back on the table and had picked up another book with his one free hand, focussing back onto a text that Roman heavily suspected was harder to read than the one Logan had given him. 

“This is mostly rubbish,” Roman murmured, after he’d finished scanning the chapter for anything even slightly relevant. “The most interesting thing about this is the section on magically-binding deals, and even that has nothing to do with getting Virgil awake again.”

“Could we not make a deal where we demand he come back?” Logan suggested, although his eyes hadn’t sparked – he’d already surmised that the suggestion was useless. 

Just to stop the silence from becoming oppressive, Roman humoured him with an answer. “Virgil needs to be aware when he either agrees to or proposes a deal – which is the first step, and we can’t even complete that one.” Logan hummed in response. “There was also a bit where we require a blood sacrifice,” Roman said. “It seems as though we’ve got to gut the Royal Adviser at the time and use their blood to draw a fancy hexagon on the ground and burn a lot of books dedicated to their incredibly boring life.”

“Is that so,” Logan responded. 

“What are you reading that has you so entirely focussed that literally me talking about murdering you doesn’t even phase you?” Roman asked, shoving his own book away from him and standing, his muscles cramping from the sudden movement as he walked around to lean over Patton’s slumbering body and look at the words Logan was reading. “You’re reading about deals, too?”

“All of these books are about deals around magic, Roman,” Logan said, as though it should have been obvious. 

“You’re not searching for another way to heal Virgil,” Roman said, walking back to his chair and slumping into it. “You’re reading into deals to see if there’s a way out of them.”

“I thought that was obvious,” Logan quipped, sending a brief glare his way. 

“Well, that’s good,” Roman contemplated. “I’m going to need a loophole to get me out of the one with Deceit.” Logan smirked at him over the cover of the book, and Roman was suddenly aware of what he’d said. “I mean – Thomas. Thomas is taking the deal.”

“Is that so?” Logan said, and there was something about the iron behind the dark eyes that called to the truth.

“Of course it isn’t so, you smug, knuckle-headed pigeon. You knew from the moment Thomas declared he’d take the deal that I’d never allow it to happen.” 

Logan tilted his head and gave Roman a look layered with both annoyance and a tinge of sadness. “And what makes you think that I’d allow either of you to take it? Neither of you have the actual intelligence to deal with anything Deceit will throw at you. And -” Logan broke off, swallowed and closed his eyes, “if everything did go to hell, I am much less of a loss than either of you.”

Roman was startled into silence – and suddenly, he was very aware of every little sound. The distant sounds of the librarians in the distance, the sound of a weak patter of rain against the windows, the sound of Patton’s breathing. 

“You’re not serious,” Roman said, despite knowing that Logan was very much serious. “I will not allow you to take that deal instead of me.”

“All due respect,” Logan replied coolly, “but I do not answer to you. I will take that deal because I am the one who’s death will matter the least in the long scheme of things.” 

“You can’t say that,” Roman said, feeling his temper rise. “Your death would destroy the one source of mature intelligence that our court has! You dying would utterly wreck us.” 

“There are so many smart people in this world,” Logan snorted, before frowning as Patton stirred slightly in his sleep at the sound. “I don’t doubt that one of them will be able to take my place.”

“There may be a lot of smart people in this world, but they won’t be you,” Roman said, forcing his voice to remain quiet. It wouldn’t do for Patton to wake up and hear this conversation. “You are what we need. And dare I even bring up Patton? If you die, he’ll be destroyed. That will be the thing he will never be able to come back from. It will be a scar that none of us will be able to heal.” 

“Patton is the strongest person I know. He will not break just because I died.” Despite his words, Logan’s lip trembled. His hand rose from its resting place at Patton’s waist to brush Patton’s honey-coloured hair out of his face, his fingers barely touching the skin. 

“I am the one who caused this mess,” Roman said, leaning back in his chair triumphantly at finding the most logically-sound argument. Logan’s nose flared in annoyance. “I am the one who will clean it up.”

“And what about the people that you leave behind? What about the wounds you’d leave us with? Because you can’t try and clean those up whilst being dead,” Logan snapped, his lips twisted in a sneer. 

“At least you would all be alive,” Roman said. “Better alive and wounded than dead.” 

Logan shook his head, settling back into his chair to get back to reading. “Some wounds you’d rather not live with.” 

“It’s a race to get to Deceit and agree to his deal, then,” Roman sighed, standing from his chair for the final time. Logan watched him pack his bags back into his arms, his eyes flickering in the light of the lantern. “And we all know who the fastest runner out of all of us is.” 

*

He closed the library doors behind him, throwing an apologetic nod to the librarian who looked like she really could not care less. He pushed the strap of his bag further up onto his shoulder and began to navigate his way downstairs, to where his bedroom was. He hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours at a time for the past week, so he didn’t doubt that he would sleep very well as soon as he fell into the cot.

“Are you robbing my library?”

Roman’s heart jumped into his mouth as he turned to look at Thomas – dripping wet, his jacket and trousers utterly soaked, obviously just arriving back. His hair hung in his face, and he, too, was gripping a bulky bag that Roman suspected was filled rather similarly to his own. “If I was going to steal something, I’d steal something much more valuable than damn books,” Roman said, not moving. 

He and Thomas were standing seven meters apart – neither of them moving to embrace each other, or shake hands as they might have done, once. 

The tension that hung thick in the air had never done before. 

“Can I help you to your room?” Roman asked, inclining his head to Thomas’s bags, acting as the chivalrous knight. 

“Actually, I wanted to see what Logan’s found,” Thomas said, his eyes going to the shut library doors and taking half a step towards them. Roman’s stomach twisted – if he let Thomas see, Thomas would know that both he and Logan were planning to get to Deceit before he was. And as much as he knew that he would, he didn’t want to explicitly disobey any orders that Thomas gave. And Thomas would indeed order both him and Logan to stand down.

He knew that he would disobey his King in a heartbeat if that sort of order was given – but he very much did not want to. 

“He’s found nothing, but he thinks he might be on the beginnings of something,” Roman said, thinking fast. “He sent me packing so that I wouldn’t disturb him – I think he wants to get the foundations of his theory right, and then he’ll send for us.” 

Thomas looked at him, and for a moment, Roman thought that he could see right through him. But then the King’s shoulders slumped, and he was holding out a hand. Roman stepped closer, hesitantly, not sure of what Thomas was asking for.

“I think I’m still mad at you,” Thomas said, still holding out his hand. “But I – I still missed you for the days that we’ve been away.” Roman stepped closer still – only three meters now. “Don’t act so stricken,” Thomas rolled his eyes. “Give me one of your bags. You have more than me.”

“A King helping a knight with his bags?” Roman asked, trying not to seem like he’d been reaching for a hug and trying desperately to pass off one of his bags instead. “If one of the others saw us, I’d be teased for weeks.”

Thomas huffed in agreement, wincing at the weight of one of the bags Roman had handed him. “I’m almost hoping for one of them to see us, now.”

“Speak for yourself,” Roman scoffed, and they set off down the stairs. Roman allowed the silence to tell him that Thomas was no longer going to start a conversation before he started. “Hey.”

To his credit, Thomas didn’t flinch. “Yes?”

“I can’t remember what was said,” Roman said, trying to focus on the way that Thomas’s face was carefully set into a neutral expression and not tripping down the stairs face-first at the same time. “But I can remember that you were – you were upset, that night. And that you still are, now.” Thomas didn’t confirm or deny this – his hand tightened on the strap of Roman’s bag, though. Roman took that as an invitation to continue. “You know me well enough to know that I’m sorry about being stupid and brash when it came to Virgil. You know that I’m doing all I can to help that situation, but I want to tell you that I don’t do it for the purpose of being forgiven. I do it for Virgil, for you. Not for myself.”

Thomas bit his lip. “And,” Roman continued, “I think – or, I know that I hurt you, expressively. And that – that is unforgivable. Even if you tried to forgive me, I’d refuse it anyway. I don’t deserve to be forgiven for hurting you, but I can promise you that I won’t stop trying to earn it anyway.” Roman was lucky – he’d timed the words just right, so that when they’d reached his bedroom door, he was just finishing. Thomas seemed mute – stunned. “Don’t say anything,” Roman told him, smiling as he lifted his bag from Thomas’s hold. “Just go to bed; you look exhausted.” 

He kicked his door open and threw all of his bags onto the floor, wincing at the blast of cold air that greeted him – had he left his window open when he left? He turned to see Thomas standing exactly where he had been, his eyes glazed. 

“I’m telling you,” Roman repeated, leaning against his doorframe. “You don’t look good. Go to bed and sleep. If I hear from my guards that you’re out of your rooms seeing those infernal ministers that have been demanding your audience, I will make you regret it. You’ll be doing exercises with me for weeks as a punishment.” 

“That’s insolence, that is,” Thomas finally replied, beginning to turn and go. “Any knight should know that calling his King ugly is a crime punishable by death.” 

Roman gasped theatrically, trying not to faint in relief that Thomas had said something. “I have never used the word ‘ugly’! You did that to yourself!”

Thomas chuckled, waving a hand goodbye as he turned and walked down the corridor, back to the stairs. Roman shut his door, doing his best not to sag against it, instead crossing straight to the window.

It was indeed raining – but the window hadn’t been open long, if the inside of his room wasn’t soaking wet. Roman swung around, eyes searching for any figure in his small room – but there was none. Roman shut his window firmly, lighting a candle and shoving his clothes into the tiny dresser before turning to his bed. 

That was when he saw it.

The little note, folded on his pillow.

Just a few words on it – but enough to make his blood thunder. 

_I’ll be there tomorrow._

_Don’t tell the others, or I won’t come._

_D._

*

It looked like, in the race for Deceit, Roman had forgotten to count Deceit himself as a player.

That had been a mistake.


	21. The Burning Pt.1

The moment that Roman woke up, he was aware of many things at once.

First of all – somehow, in the midst of everything, he’d managed to fall asleep. Perhaps it had been the knowledge that Deceit was coming to him. Not to Thomas or to Logan, but to him.

Second – something was tapping at his window, and he could hazard a good guess as to exactly what.

For that moment, he continued to lay there with his eyes shut, perfectly unmoving. He was in his bed, the world was safe, people he loved were alive. Virgil was struggling with that last part, but not for much longer.

“I know you can get in,” Roman said, refusing to open his eyes and see his doom literally approaching. “You don’t have to knock.”

“I thought I’d be courteous for a change,” Deceit’s voice said – muffled and distorted. It became clearer as he opened the small window and clambered through it. At least, that was what Roman assumed he was doing, from the scuffling sounds and muttered swear words. He still refused to rise out of bed. “I hear that you and your little crew here have been looking for me.”

At that, Roman cracked open one eye and met the yellow gaze of Deceit. As he’d suspected, days or weeks or months ago, the yellow was flat and unmoving. There weren’t any trace of the living flame and smoke that they became when magic was seething through Deceit’s blood. “For a week, now.”

Deceit shrugged. “I am a very busy being, after all. I can’t just appear whenever summoned.” 

“But you did come,” Roman said. 

“Yes,” Deceit agreed, his lip curling even as his eyes searched Roman. “I heard about a potential reason why you were all desperate for me and cut a few of my businesses short to come as soon as I could.” 

“And what was this potential reason?” Roman asked. Deceit remained silent, tapping his foot against the stone floor, his arms crossed. Roman nearly groaned but remained just as quiet even as he forced himself to rise out of bed and throw on clothes over his undershorts. 

“Wear the sash,” Deceit said, suddenly, pointing to the mentioned piece of clothing. 

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“What will I get in return?”

“How about,” Deceit murmured slyly, picking up the sash and chucking it to Roman so that he caught it instinctively. “In return for wearing the sash, I won’t burn you to cinders?”

“Your magic doesn’t work that way,” Roman said, but clipped the sash into place nonetheless. 

Deceit inclined his head. “No, but I think you’ll find that my magic does a very good job making you believe it.” 

Roman huffed a sigh in response. “I believe you wanted to make a deal with me.”

“What was your first clue?” Deceit snorted, picking at his nails. 

“You know what you want out of the deal, and I know what I want,” Roman said – carefully, clearly. “I don’t want what you’ve promised before.”

“You have a demand,” Deceit concluded, glancing towards the door – the first sign of nervousness that Roman had seen displayed by him. “And I believe I know what it is.”

“I don’t care what you think you know,” Roman interrupted, brushing past Deceit and opening his door. Casting a quick but thorough glance around told him that no one was near – it must have been around dusk. Roman had slept, solidly, for long time. “You’ll do what I say if you want me to agree to the deal.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re offering?” Deceit slyly said, watching Roman’s moves. Roman waved at him to get him to follow and began walking through the corridors, heading towards the room that Virgil was in. 

Roman swallowed as the door in question came into view. “Not exactly, but I don’t have much of a choice.”

“I believe I have told you that your helpless expression is my favourite,” Deceit said, overtaking Roman and striding straight towards the door – as if he knew exactly who lay behind it, as if he could sense it. “But your reluctant compliance face is making for a strong competition.” 

Deceit opened the door and paused on the threshold. “Go in,” Roman said, harshly. He couldn’t help it – it was the fear that at any moment, someone would appear from around the corner. 

“Why didn’t you come to me first?”

It was then that Roman pushed Deceit lightly inside – but the man had been expecting it, it seemed, as he fell lightly into the room and casually leant against the wall, his eyes firmly on the man on the bed. “We didn’t know his condition would get worse,” Roman offered, shutting the door firmly behind them and locking it for good measure. 

“That’s because you’re all fools,” Deceit murmured, although there was no poison in it. He stepped forward to fall into the seat that Roman assumed was normally engaged by Patton, leaning slightly over the sleeping man. “Look at him – you’ve all destroyed him.”

“I think it was just me, actually,” Roman said, but immediately regretted – for Deceit’s eyes, even if it was for the briefest of moments, flashed angrily. But with the next instant, that spark was gone. Deceit leaned back in the chair, pointedly ignoring the way that Virgil’s breath was seemingly becoming lighter with every repetition. “So, the deal.”

“The deal,” Deceit echoed. “You will agree to commit yourself to my plans, and in return I will heal Virgil.”

Roman thought about this for a moment – a moment longer than he would have mere months ago. “You will heal Virgil fully, and immediately. And you will not hurt Thomas, Logan or Patton.” 

Deceit’s nose flared, but he still stood and held out his hand. Roman looked at it – the way that the veins underneath his skin seemed to pulse yellow, the way his skin appeared to be made of scales but then flashed back into being plain skin. “I will heal Virgil fully and immediately, not knowingly inflict physical pain on Thomas, Logan or Patton, and you will commit to my plan for today.” 

Roman thought about it again – about how ‘today’ would only last a few more hours, if it were late in the afternoon. “Give me a moment,” he said, ignoring the way that Deceit huffed a laugh and rolled his eyes. Roman crossed the room to grab some paper and a pencil, scribbling down a few words and pocketing the paper afterwards – not giving Deceit a single chance to see exactly what he’d written. “It’s a deal,” Roman said, before he had the chance to lose his nerve, he grabbed Deceit’s hand and shook it.

“Easy, was it not?” Deceit smiled and sent a lick of yellow magic to flare around their clasped hands. Roman felt it seep into his skin and flinched; he hadn’t expected it to be cold. But it was – as cool as the ocean on a bitter day. He watched it sink into his blood and disappear and waited for anything devastating to happen. 

But nothing did.

Deceit dropped his hand and sat back down onto the chair, rolling up his shirt’s sleeves and flexing his fingers. “Immediately and fully, I believe was the deal.” 

“It was,” Roman agreed, his voice shaking. 

Deceit sent him a wink, and Roman began to feel the dooming sensation sink into his stomach. “I never said anything as to my methods for doing so, though.”

Roman stepped to the foot of Virgil’s bed and anxiously watched as Deceit placed his bare hand onto Virgil’s chest. “What are you going to do? You can’t hurt him, you said that you weren’t.”

Deceit closed his eyes and seemed to arch into the touch of his palm against Virgil’s weak heartbeat. “He’s in this coma because he doesn’t have enough magic to control the rest of it. If I return all of his magic to him, he’ll be able to push the rest of it away and come back – with a little assistance,” Deceit said, waggling the fingers on his free hand. 

“What do you mean, return all of his magic to him? He has all of his magic –“ Roman stopped and knew that it had nothing to do with Deceit’s magic that his blood ran cold. Deceit opened his eyes to watch the look of horror stretch across Roman’s face with a satisfied look. “You can’t break the deal between them,” he said. “You can’t.”

“I can,” Deceit said, “and I will. It’s impossible to break the deal when Virgil is conscious – because he’d resist it. But when he’s like this, he is utterly powerless.”

“It’ll hurt Thomas,” Roman said as the thought struck him – how Thomas had felt the bond tear, had felt the pain days later. “You swore not to hurt Thomas.”

“I swore not to knowingly hurt the King,” Deceit corrected. “I don’t know if this’ll hurt him for sure – I can but hope.”

“You –“ Roman said, but Deceit’s hand flared with that yellow light and Roman forgot his objections as Virgil’s back arched and his eyes flew open – his natural purple iris bright against the pallid colour of his skin. 

Deceit’s lip peeled itself back from his teeth as sweat started to bead on his forehead, his own eyes still clenched shut as his magic swamped around Virgil’s body. Roman must have called out for Virgil, calling his name, but the man seemed to not be able to see or hear, despite his eyes being open. Roman would have called it off at that moment, would have stopped Deceit that second if it hadn’t started to look like it had been working.

Virgil’s skin became more flushed, more healthily coloured than Roman had ever seen him under the sun. His body seemed to grow, becoming leaner, healthier looking. His shoulders became more squared, and his hair seemed to lose all of the lank greasiness that sickness had inflicted upon it and become more purple-tinged around its roots than brown. 

Roman hadn’t realized that Thomas constantly holding Virgil’s magic would mean that his King had taken some part of Virgil away from him. He wasn’t sure if Thomas knew it, either. 

He swore that he heard something crack from within – the sound and feeling of the string of a bow being released, flying free and violently throughout his muscles and his throat and his blood. The sound echoed in his mind, and he must have showed some sign of distress, for Deceit released a breath. “It worked; it broke.”

“Then why did it hurt me?” Roman said, his hand reaching up to grab his chest, feeling his own heartbeat. 

Deceit shrugged. “No idea. Now, the King might have felt that, so we must figure out what we’re going to do first.”

“Is Virgil alright?” Roman asked, looking at the man’s body on the bed. He got his answer instantly.

Virgil was more than alright; he’d never looked more alive. 

That, and the fact that he was awake, was more a hint than anything.

His purple eyes were not on Roman, though. They were utterly fixed on Deceit, who was mute as he met that stare. “You’re alright,” Roman said, and felt his face crumple.

He was suddenly very much aware of just how much he’d been spiralling into utter misery for the past few days. A week’s worth of utter stress and despair were lifted from his shoulders, and he staggered to the side of the bed as his legs failed him. 

Virgil did indeed look at him as Roman leaned over him, his hands rising to stroke his face. “What –“

“You’re alright,” repeated Roman, and allowed himself to cry. “You’re with me, you’re alright.”

“If Deceit is here,” Virgil said, his voice strong despite the fact he’d just arisen from a coma, “that means that you’re a liar, Roman. Nothing is alright when he’s here.”

Deceit scoffed, and Roman sat up. “I should have let you die,” Deceit said, eyes flashing in ire. “Should have let you kill yourself.” 

“You two know each other?” Roman asked, tearing his eyes away from Virgil to scan Deceit. 

“Once,” Deceit acknowledged, before yellow light speared itself from his fingertips to bind Virgil’s wrists and ankles to the bedframe. “Now, Virgil, you may have noticed we’ve broken the deal between you and Thomas. You’re welcome. I’ve completed my side of the deal, and now Roman must pay the price.” 

Roman smiled at Virgil’s look of utter panic. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re alright.” 

“You shouldn’t have saved me,” were the only words Virgil said. Roman flinched, before reaching up to unclip his sash from his shirt and press it into his bound hands. 

“Take it,” he whispered, and Virgil’s eyes narrowed as he felt the slip of paper being passed to him under the guise of giving him the sash. He took both as Roman stood, feeling a strange tug at his chest. 

“Don’t look back now, Roman,” Deceit said, opening the door and ushering Roman out. Roman would have looked back – of course he would have. But it was an order, and Roman had agreed to do whatever Deceit now ordered him to do.

“Virgil,” Roman said, not daring to turn around at look at the man strapped to the bed until Patton could come and release him. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”

He felt the room shudder. Saw Deceit spin around at look him with a mixture of utter disgust and twisted delight. Deceit said nothing, though. It was Virgil that broke the silence, his voice lashing as though it were a whip. “You – what?”

“I love you. I can’t say that I always have, although I want to say that I’ve loved you since you offered me your hand when I was squatting in that marsh. But that would mean that it wasn’t a choice, to fall for you. And it was – you were my choice, always. I choose to fall for you, even if it gets me hurt and tortured and hated. I choose to fall for you, even it means that I make stupid decisions because of it. I will always choose to fall for you, Virgil, and I love you.”

“Look at me,” Virgil said, his voice sounding oddly strangled. Roman didn’t dare – not as Deceit’s eyes flared and shifted into the pure sparks that Roman had seen before, in purple form. “Roman, look at me.”

Roman shook his head and shut the door behind him.

***

Deceit said nothing as he led Roman down the corridor, to sit just by the alcove that had housed both him and Patton a few days ago. He leaned against the wall and gave Roman an assessing gaze, before reaching out to him and holding out his hand.

“Take it,” Deceit said, and Roman blinked – there was a crown of black roses in his hand, their vines twisted and jutting out so that the thorns could barely be seen. Roman took it, the crown’s jilting weight meaning that it was barely a breath of air. Roman would have thought it would be heavier.

But he’d always mused that crowns were meant to be light upon the head, but heavy on the heart.

He’d seen it with Thomas, after all. 

“Put it on,” was the next order. As Roman blanched, bringing the crown level with his eyes so that he could inspect it, Deceit sighed. “I believe I promised you a crown, once. I don’t often go back on my promises.” As Roman still hesitated to crown himself with the dark roses, Deceit began to tense, his shoulders tightening and his chest rising more rapidly. “I can always go and find Thomas to take this deal instead,” he said. “My magic can make him see Virgil still in that disgusting state, and you of all people know that he’d take the deal as fast as I could blink.” 

“You will not lay a finger on Thomas,” Roman said, and placed the crown on his hair. 

“No, I will not,” Deceit smiled, and watched as Roman’s arms fell down to his sides again. “You will, though. And you’ll do far worse than laying a finger on him.” 

“You said that Thomas wouldn’t be hurt,” Roman said, fear clouding his throat and causing jaw to stick. “That was our deal.”

“Our deal was that I would not physically cause Thomas harm – and I never said a thing about what you will do. Your task is simple, Roman. I’ll be speaking to you the entire time, guiding you through things, evaluating whether or not you’ve done your task right.” 

“If I don’t do it right?” Roman said, his palms turning sweaty and his breath evading him. It was a chant in his blood – he’d never hurt Thomas. Never, never, never.

“Haven’t you and Logan been reading up on magical deals?” Deceit smiled at the name of the taller male, as if gloating. “You already know the penalty.”

Roman did. “What is the task?”

“Easy,” Deceit perked up, an ugly light going up in flames in his eyes. “You’re going to break Thomas’s heart into teeny, tiny, broken and irreplaceable pieces.” 

Roman wished for the time where he could laugh at the lunacy of the man – the thing – in front of him. The time where he had built walls around his mind and his soul like his pride and his ego, believing that they’d never break and let the monsters in. 

They had.

They’d broken the moment that Deceit had worn a different face and used it to trick those trusted walls into letting him into the garden of Roman’s mind.

Roman swallowed. “I refuse.”

Deceit laughed, fixing Roman with an oddly endearing look. He tapped his head. “What made you think you had a choice anymore?”

_You’ve never had a choice, you know._ Roman didn’t have to know that the crown was doing its job – was basically tying him to a fate that he did not want, much like how Virgil was now tied to a bed. It was a prettier shackle, the crown – but it was a shackle nonetheless.

“Get out of my head,” Roman said aloud, wondering if it was pointless – would the crown be able to hear his own thoughts and know he was a traitor, or would it merely see the things that he did?

“Would you rather Thomas’s heart break, or Virgil’s death? Pray tell. I can easily kill him,” Deceit said, altering himself tenderly so that his chest was facing right along the direction to where Virgil lay, probably desperately screaming along a shattered bond that had once tethered him to a prince. “His magic has barely settled back into his body; I’m strong enough to put him out of his misery.” 

“Thomas’s heart is strong,” Roman said, breathing fast. “Breaking it would need me to burn this kingdom, kill the ones he loves, prove that I don’t care for him anymore.”

Deceit’s smile was awful. “And that, Roman, sounds to me like the beginnings of a to-do list.”


	22. The Burning Pt.2

There were many problems with wearing a crown made of roses, many of them being practical. The thorns were furrowing deeper into Roman’s brow with every frown he made – which were numerous. He didn’t dare reach up to check if the dampness of his temple was from sweat or from blood spilled by those thorns clutching to his skull. The biggest problem, though, was not the fact that the roses were black and clashed horribly with his eyes, or the fact that thorns were clearly not the best material for the crown’s base. 

It was probably the fact that the crown whispered to him – had been whispering to him since Deceit had clicked his fingers and disappeared. 

_Missing me?_

As if. 

_Careful. Here, even your thoughts will betray you._

It was true. And if Deceit sensed it, Roman was going to face the consequence of breaking the magical deal. And he would not – would never.

_I’m working on the burning part of our to-do list, and my army will soon be infiltrating the castle to get rid of the guards,_ the snide voice inside his skull said, blanketing over the other thoughts in Roman’s head. _I strongly recommend you start with Thomas._

Roman strolled through the castle as though he were savouring every step, enjoying the late evening air. He wasn’t particularly worried about people seeing the makeshift crown; with any luck, they’d smile and think that Patton had made it for the knight, that the pair must have been getting a much-needed break between the stress of the happenings lately. 

Although Roman was now wondering if whether it was wise to count on luck – for it had definitely been evading him for the most part of his life. The one stroke of it was that Virgil had found him one day in a marsh; perhaps life had decided that was all he deserved.

“Roman!” 

Luck turned into misfortune and stabbed Roman through the heart. He recognised the voice; he believed he’d recognise that voice from beyond this world. “Patton –“ The man skipped down the corridor, his energy contagious. Roman scanned him from head to toe, trying to find the gauntness that had taken residence in the man’s cheeks, in the hollows of his eyes. But there was no trace of it; the man in front of him looked as though he hadn’t suffered a day in his life.

Perhaps, with Virgil healed, Patton’s magic had returned to him just as Virgil’s had.

Roman was loathe to take that away from him. 

“I like your crown,” Patton said, coming to a jaunty halt in front of Roman and reaching up to touch one of the roses. “Who made that for you-“

Roman shoved him away, but not before Patton’s finger had brushed one of the petals. He wouldn’t have known if Patton had indeed touched one of the flowers, ordinarily – but the crown had somehow become part of him. Patton’s touch sent a jolt of magic rising through Roman – but it wasn’t his own magic. It was the magic that Deceit had sent into him mere minutes ago. _Don’t let him touch you,_ the crown screeched, _it’ll make his magic form a shield and shove me out._ Roman considered whether that would entirely be a shame – but Virgil’s life was still in the balance. He couldn’t terminate the deal; he’d sooner die. 

_That can be arranged._

Roman conjured the image of a hand throwing an incredibly rude gesture that had once made even Virgil choke when he’d thrown it at the man after Virgil had attempted to steal one of his scones. “It’s just a crown,” Roman said, realizing that Patton was looking at him with eyes as wide as saucers. 

“Wha-“ 

“Patton,” Roman hurriedly said, cutting off the male. His thoughts were waves, crashing into one another – he tried to focus on other images, other memories, trying to drown the crown out from hearing the only thought process that mattered. From the high-pitched whine that the crown was giving off, needling a headache into existence at the base of his skull, it was working. “I need you to go straight to Virgil, get him and Logan out. Get yourself out. Do what Virgil says, help him. Don’t trust me from now on.”

“Roman –“ Patton murmured, but Roman grabbed his shirt and practically flung him down the hall; he couldn’t know if the crown had heard that, but he wasn’t about to take his chances when Patton was at stake. Roman threw himself in the opposite direction, practically fleeing from Patton as though the man was poisonous. He didn’t stop running until he was outside the ballroom, the door guarded by a few guards who merely gave him amused glances at finding him breathless. 

Roman waved a hand at them and opened the door, not struggling with the door as he had done a week ago; he didn’t want to think that the magic Deceit had woven into his blood helped his strength, but it was perhaps the only explanation. 

The ballroom had been destroyed.

The windows were all but gaping shreds leading into the room from the outside, and the walls looked like a beast with very large claws of electric had used it as a scratching pole. 

_You think this will distract me from the fact that you had one of Thomas’s loved ones in front of you, and you didn’t kill him?_

Roman huffed a laugh. Patton would have been easy to kill, it was true – the man wouldn’t have thought Roman capable of it until his sword was already through his heart. But he’d needed Patton to round up the others, get them in the same place, get them away from Thomas.

Because if Thomas had others with him, he was powerful. 

Roman had eliminated that possibility, now. Thomas would be alone, and so easy to break.

A bell broke through the hustling and disturbing silence of the wrecked ballroom, and Roman started. He heard the guards muttering outside as they rushed to what Roman assumed was a meeting place, and knew he had to hurry. Luckily, the movement of guards and soldiers in the halls was so erratic that none questioned the Knight dashing through them, impatiently brushing off second looks at his crown or a laugh at how he was going the wrong way. 

He reached the door that he was looking for and burst through, not allowing himself a second to think.

Thinking meant allowing someone to hear.

_Trying to keep me deaf will not work, Roman._

Roman took in the stunned looks of the ministers in the room with silence and stony stillness. He could see the silhouette of the king’s chair, the ornate back facing him. He could almost see how Thomas had frozen at the sound of the doors being kicked open, his bronze eyes staring at the reactions of his ministers before he would twist to peak over the top of the chair at who was coming in.

Roman took a breath in.

And as he exhaled, everything that had ever been Roman slipped out onto the stale air of the courtroom and shattered.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, this thing now living in his skin seething contempt. He stalked over to Thomas’s chair and placed an arrogant arm around it, startling Thomas as he glimpsed his face. 

He allowed himself a moment to look at Thomas and feel the hatred.

Here was the man who took away a fundamental part of Virgil and had the nerve to demand Virgil to not use his power unless he commanded it. Here was the man who had looked at the homeless and had placed trading routes as a priority. Here was the man who only cared about the homeless after Roman had kicked up a fuss, probably only to get him to shut up.

Here was the man who knew how Roman felt about Virgil and had commanded him to kiss him because he knew Roman couldn’t have done it – because he’d needed to manipulate Roman into doing as he otherwise commanded.

Suddenly, it was easy to see Thomas as less of a man and more of a coward.

“I wasn’t aware that you’d hired a jester to interrupt our meeting,” a woman with sharp grey eyes said, breaking Thomas and Roman out of their silent staring at each other and drawing their gazes to her. “His hat of bells is a little more sadistic, but I can get behind it.”

“He’s mine,” Thomas said, a little pale. Whatever he’d read on Roman’s face was enough to leave him wary and confused. “He’s my Knight, in charge of my armies and guards. He said that if I pushed myself and had this meeting, he’d come and drag me back to my resting quarters – I hadn’t realized that he’d take it seriously.”

“Is your Majesty not feeling well?” The woman said, concern flaring in those shards she had for eyes. “Your Knight is correct, you shouldn’t be pushing yourself, we heard that you recently suffered a blow to your physical shape –“

“He’s about to suffer one more if he doesn’t come with me right now,” Roman smoothly said, a purr of violence hidden behind his tone. Thomas heard it – understood it, if his sudden stiffening was anything to go by. 

“We can continue this meeting later,” the woman nodded, as if she understood a single thing. “The trading routes can wait.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Trading routes.

Thomas’s homeless act was going steadily – small progress made in the smaller towns. But it wasn’t the priority; had never been a priority. It had been small hours that Thomas fitted around everything else – literally anything else, to appease Roman. No other reason to help those who needed it.

Roman’s sword sung as he drew it from its sheath.

And the room fell silent as he put it against Thomas’s throat.

“The trading routes can wait,” Roman agreed, leaning in so that his arm was around Thomas’s shoulders, pulling the King towards him. Thomas went willingly – his body centred and very aware of the fact that polished steel was against the skin of his neck. “The King will not wait, however, as he is going to come with me.”

The room was thick – but it fell away as Thomas looked at him square in the face. Those brown eyes – that had become Roman’s unexplained favourite colour – were heavy with shock. No hint of betrayal or humour – pure and utter unfiltered shock.

He couldn’t believe it, Roman realized. He hadn’t even thought that Roman holding a sword to his throat had been an option. Roman understood, perhaps better than anyone. He would have felt the same way, given the same revelation that he had a few minutes ago. Was this an effect of the crown? 

_The crown is nothing but a tool for me to talk to you with, and for me to see what you’re doing and thinking. I can’t put thoughts into your head, you fool. You’re doing this yourself._

The thought was a comfort.

It made it very easy to smile at Thomas as his ministers fled the room, shrieks rising to the surface as they realized that no guards were in sight. They’d all been called away by the bell, the unexplained summons. 

The ministers ran away, and it gave Thomas the freedom to slump in his chair, against Roman’s arm. “What are you doing, just Roman?”

“What I should have done years ago,” Roman said, grabbing the back of Thomas’s shirt and pulling him from the chair. He kept the sword against his King’s throat and added the dagger in his sleeve to jab him in the back. “Walk.”

“Is it too much to hope that this is just another one of your methods for getting me to exercise?"

Roman laughed, loudly and gloriously. Thomas was still clinging to the hope that this was Roman’s idea of a joke – even if the king must have known, in his soul, that Roman would have once rather placed his own sword to his own throat than to think of touching Thomas with the intent to hurt.

They walked through the corridors that Roman had grown up in, running around with Virgil and Thomas hard on his heels as they plotted a new adventure. If anyone had seen them from behind, they might have rolled their eyes – Roman’s arm was still around Thomas, and the two were walking in step, perfectly.

They always had done – Roman and Thomas fit together when they moved. One would take a step to find that the other had done the same thing. Roman had never really thought about it before, how he didn’t have to jostle Thomas for falling behind or being out of step. They stepped in perfect formation.

“We’re going to my rooms?” Thomas asked, swallowing nervously and wincing as the edge of the sword kissed his throat in response. “Why?”

“I need you to have a good view,” Roman said. 

“Of what?” Thomas asked, and gasped as the dagger found itself digging into his spine a little more harshly. Roman didn’t want Thomas to look at him and find the answers in his face.

He kicked open the door to Thomas’s room and smiled at the fact that there were still no guards to be seen – for once. He stepped inside and locked the door, letting Thomas free and sheathing the sword back where it belonged. Thomas stayed quite still, a line of blood on his throat and a sheen of sweat covering his face. “Roman, what’s wrong? What do I need to do to help you?”

Roman smiled at him. 

It was not a pleasant smile – not his usual baring of teeth and passion, or his normal idle flirty curve of the lips. It was a tiger’s smile, the kind that a child might imagine the beast would give to them just before the tiger ripped them to shreds. 

“I want to kill you,” Roman said, holding his hands up in a cordial gesture. “But more than that, I want you to write and sign a piece of paper that will mean that I am the new King of this country.”

_What?_ The crown’s voice hissed over his thoughts, laced in shocked amusement. 

“What?” Thomas echoed. 

_I didn’t expect that, but I suppose that I did promise you a kingdom_ the crown mused, and the thorns seemed to retract their claws. Roman barely noticed as he watched Thomas sink to his knees on the floor. 

“I will be a better king than you,” Roman said, strolling over and using a couple of fingers to hook them under Thomas’s chin and force the King to look at him. “And look – you’re already kneeling. I will make this kingdom better – I will focus on the people that you’ve forgotten.”

Thomas looked like he might be sick. “You can have the kingdom, Roman, I don’t care. I don’t doubt that you’d be better at it than me. But why – you’ve got to talk to me, to look at me –“

“I don’t have to do anything except get you to start writing and signing,” Roman interrupted, gesturing towards Thomas’s cluttered desk. “There is no one who will save you. Get going. It might take a while.”

*

Roman didn’t know how long he sat at the desk, watching Thomas silently write on a piece of official parchment and prepare the wax to form the royal seal.

But it was enough.

Thomas looked up, tears streaking their way down his face as he licked his lips and tried once again to appeal to his dearest friend. “It just needs my signature.” Thomas was about to sign before Roman flung a hand out and knocked the quill from his shaking fingers. He perked up – his body electrifying, thinking that Roman had finally come to reason. 

He hadn’t.

He’d switched his gaze to outside the glass doors of the balcony, where night had long since fallen. Roman had been feeling a little warmer than usual – perhaps the giddiness of his situation. He’d been looking to those doors, thinking of all that had happened in his years of living at the castle, and then he’d noticed.

It was night’s domain. It should be dark.

It was not.

_I did promise you that I was working on the burning part of your list,_ the crown sang, gleefully interpreting Roman’s shock as pleasant surprise. 

Because Thomas’s kingdom was burning.

And everything had gone to hell.

Flaming, burning hell.

Roman brushed his hair out of his eyes, ignoring the way that sweat had tousled into what surely, a while ago, would have sent him into bouts of panic. He knew that he should have cared. 

He didn’t.

Not as he watched the flames crawl higher along the skyline, burning the town and surrounding villages. Not as he had difficultly breathing, the smoke in the air constricting. But he didn’t care – the castle was stone; it would not burn.

Instead, the people would.

Roman felt rather than saw his companion – his captive – draw closer to join him in looking out of the glass doors to the balcony. He wished Thomas hadn’t; not as Roman heard his breath catch and shudder in his throat. If Roman ever had to assign a noise to heartbreak, it would have been the sudden change in Thomas’s breathing. It went from the shuddering and deep breaths that stumbled from his throat into shallow pants, like his very soul was rebelling.

But still they looked out towards the dark night, seeing the castle courtyard spanning out below them – and beyond that, the night wasn’t so dark anymore. Fire had that effect. Thomas’s kingdom was burning; flames reached steadily higher and higher, scorching the flags that normally hung so tall and proud. 

For a moment, Roman regretted it. For a moment, he wished that everything hadn’t played out to be exactly as they had. 

Then he again focused on his and Thomas’ reflections in the glass instead of the burning world beyond, and that thought fled as quickly as the rest of Thomas’ court had. How quickly those ministers had turned tail and ran the moment that Roman had turned his sword to jab Thomas in his back, a dagger placed at his back. 

Thomas was still wearing his crown – a far bigger one than the delicate band that Roman had first met him in. Roman awaited the normal surge of jealousy that awoke whenever he dared give that crown more than a second of thought – but it did not come. The grief, true and endless, that was drowning in Thomas’ eyes perhaps hinted that a crown was more a burden than a gift. 

But it didn’t matter.

Not when he could feel the crown’s anxious excitement building, and knew that soon, Deceit’s army would storm the castle to get to Thomas and rip the crown from him.

“Any moment now, Your Highness.” He paused, looking at the piece of paper that Thomas still had yet to sign. The piece of paper that would dictate what his life would be like after all was done. “Believe me, I know - I’ve sunk pretty low. But whatever I’ve done, you deserve.”

Because he did deserve it. 

Thomas had once said it himself – that he was weak.

The kingdom did not need a weak King on its throne.

“Roman –“

“Quiet! I’m the bad guy – that’s fine. It’s no fault of mine, and some justice at last will be served.”

“Please, listen!” Thomas’s voice broke, reaching to grab Roman’s hand – but Roman jerked away yet again. He needed silence – he needed his mind to himself – he needed the flames to cool and soothe – he needed the others to understand. 

All of those things, he needed.

But instead of getting what he needed, he did exactly as he wanted.

Roman stiffened, reaching behind him to grab his black cloak, looking back out towards the window where he could only barely make out the armies beginning to move. 

Even without checking, he knew who’d be leading those armies.

“It’s time to step up,” he murmured to that little leader, so far in the distance, “or it’s time to back down – and there’s only one answer for me.” 

The crown chuckled in response.

“I’ll stand up and fight, because I know that I’m right – and I’m ready.” 

He opened the glass doors, the repulsive air and the sounds of people screaming wafting up to meet him. “I’m ready,” he said again. It sounded false even to his own ears – and he didn’t need to look behind him to know that Thomas had fallen to his knees at the sounds of his people suffering. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he amended.

Roman locked the King in his quarters securely, leaving the King to mourn the sounds of his people suffering. He then drew his sword as he strolled back down the corridors that he and Thomas had just walked up, a few minutes or hours prior.

_You call that breaking his heart?_

Roman sighed as he ran down the stairs, his blood seething in his veins. He called that a start – and what better way to really cause him pain than seeing Roman go down to kill the people of the kingdom that Roman had just claimed to wish to protect as its King?

_I have a better plan. Come and join me and my army._

His heart twisted, but Roman kept running. Ran out of the garden, past the orchard that he and Logan had once seen Deceit in, had once laughed as the male tripped over a tree root-

_Shut up._

*

He stood at Deceit’s side, his army of shadows and darkness at their back. He’d almost screamed at seeing them, earlier, when he’d ran past the flames in order to join the yellow-eyed one who held his leash. Deceit’s power was immense; it had called his army into being. 

“You could have done this at any time,” Roman said, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. “You could have conjured this army within the castle to slaughter Thomas at any time.”

The crown hummed, but the thing beside him stayed silent. Roman had begun to think of the crown as a method of mental communication – a thing that he couldn’t have removed from his head no matter if how hard he tugged at the roses.

He’d found that the thorns dug in very, very deep.

“I didn’t have you before now,” Deceit said, one side of his mouth quirking into a grin. “I was waiting for that.”

Roman disregarded this, still unable to believe that he had been the turning point. “Why are we here?”

Deceit’s army – our army, the crown reminded him – had their backs facing the castle, looking outwards – to where the hill was, shrouded in forest. When Deceit spoke next, his voice was lathered in annoyance. “I was going to march them into the castle to match Thomas’s army. But it seems that someone sounded an alarm bell that had all of the guards and soldiers meet at a set point under a leader.”

Roman squinted at him. “That alarm bell wasn’t sounded by you? I thought that was part of your plan.”

Deceit flushed. “Of course, it was part of my plan. Now their army and my army can have their fight out here, where Thomas is watching from his balcony and knowing that his warriors are dying.”

Roman didn’t dare look back at the castle, to where he knew the highest tower was. Instead, he peered at the edges of the forest as the royal gold and purple uniforms of Thomas’s army was appearing. 

“Have you considered,” he said, after watching the total amount of people marching out from the cover of the trees, “that Thomas’s army is bigger than yours?”

Because it was. Far bigger – and there were still squadrons appearing from the trees, and Roman just knew that the archers were staying behind to make full use of the cover. Deceit’s voice sounded small. “My soldiers can fight better. It doesn’t matter that their leader managed to get so many people.”

Roman nodded, ignoring the tiny screams of confusion that the crown was projecting through his brain. “And who is their leader?” Deceit didn’t bother to answer as he inclined his head to said leader, who’d stopped the army a few hundred meters away. With the moon shining down on him and a red sash wrapped around his neck like a scarf, Virgil waved to Deceit and Roman with the air of sarcastic kindness. 

His eyes were alight – purple fire clashed horribly with the red of Roman’s sash, but he wore it magnificently well. As Roman watched, searched his face for some hint of anything, the fire in his eyes sputtered and went out, dying back to their normal onyx.

His magic was not settled, still – Deceit still had control. Virgil slumped against his saddle, teetering dangerously. A couple of riders nudged their horses to either side of Virgil’s grey stallion, supporting his body with their own. Logan looked like war suited him; his hair was slicked back, and his glasses barely masked his eyes shining with the promise of strategic prowess. 

Patton looked devastated as he met Roman’s gaze and concentrated.

Trying to find any shred of remorse with his magic, undoubtedly. Roman glanced behind him, looking up to the sky just above the tallest tower – where Thomas was, unable to see the figures of the people he loved best but more than able to see the carnage.

Deceit’s hand found itself at Roman’s elbow, bringing his attention back the field. “Let’s play, shall we?”


	23. The Burning Pt.3

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Roman said, watching as Deceit’s army of shadows trembled at the sight of Thomas’s, “but you’ve never actually had to lead an army, have you?”

“I have,” Deceit said, indignance coming strong in the way that he frowned. 

“What’s the point of lying?” Roman said, shaking his head. “I know that you haven’t, there’s nothing to be gained from saying that you have.”

“Lying has always been my greatest weapon,” Deceit muttered, irked that Roman could see through him. Roman flattered himself that he could have spotted that lie a mile away – but in truth, it was the crown. It sent a flicker of energy through his mind every time Deceit lied – the magic of lies calling to its own. 

“Not anymore,” Roman said. “Your greatest weapon is now me.”

Roman’s ego was unbreakable. 

It was built on foundations of concrete and hard, grievous work. He’d worked his body to the breaking point with the guards, with the soldiers, with the knights. He hadn’t been appointed head of Thomas’s armies for nothing. 

Deceit shot him a calculating look. “You always did have the most beautiful ego I’ve ever seen,” he purred, which made Roman feel slightly sick. “What do you suggest?”

“Just doing damage and beating them isn’t the point here,” Roman said. “The point is that Thomas sees his army break. I can do that – make him see his soldiers splitting up and breaking. Let me place your – shadows.” The crown stayed silent – none of that awful magic seeping through his thoughts. Because Roman hadn’t lied – he intended to do exactly as he’d said he would. Thomas deserved it.

“And ordinarily, I’d call dibs on their leaders,” Deceit prompted, his eyes steadily becoming illuminated by some inner glow. “But your infernal terms meant that I can no longer do as I please with them.”

Roman felt his ears burn as he sneered. “Patton won’t be fighting anyway – Logan would rather die than let him. Plus, he’s never lifted a sword in his life. Virgil wouldn’t dare waste Logan, who is his best chance at finding a strategy to beat me. There’s not even a point to you fighting them.”

“Didn’t you want to save them?”

The question brought him up short, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “Logan is an obtuse and ruthless man who only cares about what is logical – I’ve clashed with him more than anyone else. I won’t deny that I loved Patton, but I have no proof that it was even my own feelings when he has the magic to manipulate them. I doubt I truly know him. I needed them away from Thomas in order to weaken him. And now that there’s a plan for me becoming King, I know they’d never stop trying to undermine me for Thomas. They’re of no use in that future of mine.”

Deceit looked as though Roman had handed him a very nice, expensive present. Roman knew it was the fact that every word he’d spoken was the truth. “And Virgil, the one that you agreed to this deal for?”

Roman allowed himself to think about the ballroom. “I owed him. He saved me from himself, and honour is important to me. I had to get equal.” 

Deceit said nothing for a moment, a light breeze lifting the smell of smoke from below their noses. “You told him that you loved him.” 

Roman winced. “I needed to say something that would get him to not destroy me. Saying that I loved him… I thought it would do the trick.”

The crown crooned at the presence of a lie, but Deceit didn’t push. Instead, he reigned his horse of shadow closer to Roman. “I’ll take care of them. You have too many lies surrounding your heart; I don’t trust them.”

“You swore not to hurt them,” Roman said, raising an eyebrow. As if his insides weren’t melting into molten pits of rage.

“I swore not to physically damage them,” Deceit raised, a little smile playing on his mouth. “I think you, of all people, should have known that I am stronger at mentally torturing people than any other kind.”

Roman hummed. “You also swore that you would fully and immediately heal Virgil.”

Deceit paled, his smile slipping from his face like water. “What?”

“Immediately and fully,” Roman said, looking straight at Virgil. Virgil’s onyx eyes narrowed, and he muttered something viciously at Patton, who was earnestly saying something while his eyes were frantic. “You healed him, but not fully.” _Well, aren’t you becoming smart._ The crown growled. Its master, too, growled wordlessly. “He’s still on his deathbed.”

“If I heal him fully now,” Deceit said, anger riding his vowels and impudence grinding his letters, “it’ll be a blow to my magical reserves. I won’t be able to fight him or anyone else on this battlefield – someone else will have to, and they will fail.”

“Go through with your side of the deal,” Roman said tightly. “And I’ll go through with mine.”

“Are you not listening?” Deceit hissed. “If my soldiers go against Virgil with a full reserve of magic, they will all be obliterated, and I won’t have enough magic to call more of them or even fight!”

“They won’t fail,” Roman said, closing his eyes. He remembered the bolt of fear striking his chest, the shivers and the blissful darkness of Virgil sparing him from his magic. “Because they will have me at their helm.”

Deceit laughed. “You are going to fight Virgil? Without a single defence, a single drop of magic?”

“I nearly took his head off with my sword once,” Roman said. “I’m sure he remembers.”

“You won’t be able to kill him,” Deceit said, and the crown stayed silent. His words, for once, were pure and utter truth. “The deal was about making him live.”

“I never said I’d kill him, idiot,” Roman snapped. “I said I’d fight him. If Thomas sees that… Sees either me or Virgil fighting the other with intent to hurt… There’s no coming back from that. He’d think that one of us would end up killing the other – and that would break him.” 

Deceit shrugged. “Place my armies correctly before going off on a suicide mission, would you? My own army placing skills are rusty.” 

Roman started yelling at his army of shadows, using language that he was certain Patton would nearly faint at hearing. But as Roman turned to see if Patton was indeed watching, he was disappointed. Only Virgil and Logan were there, beginning to march their army slowly forwards, Patton nowhere in sight.

“Heal him fully now,” Roman said. “I will fight him at full strength.”

Deceit looked carefully at him, and Roman got the sense that the crown was combing carefully through his thoughts of the last few hours. Satisfied at what he found, the creature sighed and pointed a finger at Virgil. Virgil didn’t move as a purple aura began to whisper around him, lifting the tendrils of his hair, now becoming violet at the roots and ridding itself of brown. His eyes inflamed with it. 

He did not look shocked, did not scream. Roman had never seen anything more resplendent. 

And he began marching his army forwards to fight him.

“I can’t fight,” the thing that had once been Deceit rasped, sweat gathering on pale skin. “I’m going to – watch.” 

Deceit slipped from his saddle, but never made it to the grassy floor. He disappeared, a mere ripple in the air signifying his departure. Along with it, the crown became quiet and the flicker of magic that had taken residence in Roman’s gut disappeared. Still, the soldiers behind him obeyed his directions, spreading themselves to form a point where Roman lightly nudged his horse into a trot.

Neither side began the typical battle run towards each other; they merely crossed the field in a painfully slow pace. It was only when Roman and Virgil were a mere ten meters away from each other that Virgil called his army to a halt, prompting Roman to do the same.

Virgil gave Logan a meaningful look, and the male nodded, brutally curbing his horse around to charge it to the back of the human army. Roman didn’t dare watch him go, didn’t dare look into any other face than Virgil’s. 

“Where’s the master that holds your leash?” Virgil asked.

“Watching,” Roman said. 

“I’d better give him a show, then,” Virgil said, and Roman tensed. 

As if tensing would have given him any warning of what was going to happen.

Virgil erupted – a pure ray of purple starlight, reaching up towards the black of the sky and becoming its latest star. The sound of the magic blistering its way out from its holder was screams, a tumbling mess of female and male noises of pure terror. Roman didn’t flinch.

Didn’t do anything as Virgil lifted his arms above his head and then lowered them to point at Roman.

The beacon of violet light followed guidance of Virgil’s open palm and unleashed itself on the army of shadows as the soldiers yelled a sudden battle cry and surged forwards. They were not afraid; Virgil’s magic had not touched them.

But Roman’s army of shadows howled as their skin blistered and burned with purple light – light to banish them. _I told you – he’d wipe them out!_ The crown feebly said, but Roman got the sense it was angry. He didn’t care about much, now. Virgil’s magic was fear – there was not much about this situation that could get any worse. All he had feared, bracing for the blow, was not feeling the primal emotions and thoughts that he had before taking Deceit’s deal.

Virgil had ridded Roman of any lingering traces of emotions, now.

Roman was vaguely aware of his shadow army being ripped to shreds by the men he’d once trained himself, after the initial blast of fear had taken out a large fraction and had inspired fear in the rest. But he couldn’t care.

Not as he drew the sword at his hip and marched to meet Virgil, who was watching his every move with eyes of purple. There was no ethereal aura of light surrounding him now – he’d decimated most of the army, and that had taken most of his magic. But he had enough to make his eyes light with that purple flame. 

“Get a sword,” Roman told him tersely, the pommel of his sword firmly in his hands. “And remember that we aren’t playing with wooden sticks anymore.”

Virgil’s eyes lined with tears but within the space of a single second, they had hardened. “I’ve told you before, Princey,” he murmured, “I don’t need a sword to fight.” But violet flames flickered in both hands and morphed until Virgil was wielding two long, wicked knives made purely of that purple fire. “Don’t forget to slide,” Virgil said.

Roman laughed. “I am not afraid of you.”

“That’s stupid,” Virgil replied, and moved. His knives were flashing towards Roman’s throat, their cruel edge more than capable of tearing it out – but Roman’s sword met them both, deflecting them with force as the Knight twisted his body away from his attacker. 

“Brave,” Roman snapped, and planted his left heel in the ground so that he could swipe at Virgil’s knees. 

The man danced back, more nimbly than Roman had ever seen him. “I don’t think so,” Virgil snapped right back, his lips pulling back from his teeth as they exchanged blows, the weapons in their hands singing. “You’re just stupid.”

Roman pressed his weapon harder, allowing his body to move without restraint. Virgil caught every blow, not giving him a single inch. “You knew Deceit would come after me,” Roman snarled, his breath steadily becoming laboured. “You knew. And you still left the castle unprotected, left them all unprotected –“

“You hate to be protected,” Virgil snapped, dodging Roman’s sword as it arced through the air and returning it in kind. 

“But I needed it!” Roman said, ducking. He retreated a step, but Virgil didn’t pause to gloat as he pressed Roman harder, back into the lines of shadows that were being slaughtered. “I needed it, Virgil, and you knew that! But you allowed me to act as some sort of bait, luring in Deceit because you knew he’d come for me -”

“Yes, I would have _loved_ Deceit to come for a visit.” The poisonously sarcastic words were accompanied by a particularly cruel jab at Roman’s stomach, which he leapt back to avoid. Virgil had never seriously practiced swordplay with him before; the male had preferred to watch him sweat and suffer, offering sardonic and sarcastic humour on the occasional break. Roman had to wonder if it was because Virgil hadn’t wanted him to know just how good he was. “That’s all I want, you know, pure and utter destruction-“

“Wouldn’t have happened if you had protected the castle-“

“Why else do you think Deceit stayed away for so damn long, you fool-“

“He still came _back_ -“

Roman’s body moved on its own, and Virgil’s knives flew up into the air to land far behind Roman. Virgil’s eyes sputtered at that precise moment and Roman felt his emotions returning, like a river running into the ocean. The world around them paused, watching as their leader crouched, grasping the red sash around his neck.

“Kill him,” Deceit said, stepping neatly back into being. Roman could tell how much it cost him to do so – could feel both men’s exhaustion in himself. “Thomas can see you, I’m willing to bet. Break Virgil, and you break him.”

The deal that Roman had agreed to declared that Roman did everything that Deceit ordered.

Roman blinked.

But as he turned to plunge his blade into Deceit, Deceit was no longer there.

He appeared a few meters away, pain tightening his features as he forced his reserve of magic to obey him. “You’d turn on me?”

Virgil smiled, and stood. Roman gave him a high five before turning back to Deceit. “I break our deal,” Roman said, smiling.

“You break our deal and the consequence was the life in balance,” Deceit said, rolling his eyes. “If you break the deal, Virgil will die anyway.” 

Roman shrugged as he felt the crown fall from his head and the unspoken anchor to Deceit in his brain snapped. “No, he won’t. Your magic isn’t strong enough to revert the deal; the cost will merely go to whoever made the deal in the first place.”

Deceit abruptly sat down onto the grass. “My magic won’t kill me!” 

“No, it won’t,” Roman said. “But it’ll kill me.” 

 

*

 

Virgil’s smile froze on his face as he processed Roman’s words. “I had to get your magic depleted entirely before I broke the deal,” Roman murmured to Deceit, gesturing to the destruction that the human army had unleashed on what remained of Deceit’s shadows. “Getting you to summon an army that would be trampled anyway was the first part. Prompting you to use your magic to make it look like the kingdom was burning was the next – and then the final blow was returning all of Virgil’s magic.”

“You’re going to die,” Deceit said.

“Good,” Roman replied. “I was never yours. I just needed Virgil to be alright; that’s all I needed from you. If the price I had to pay is my own life, I’m not afraid of paying it.”

“Did you know?” Deceit whirled on Virgil, who looked destroyed.

“I knew he wasn’t yours,” Virgil said, and a tear escaped from the prison of his onyx eyes. “I gave him eight openings to kill me in our swordfight alone, and he didn’t take them.”

“I knew you liked watching me work out,” Roman teased, glancing around. “I knew that you knew my moves.”

The fire surrounding the kingdom had long since winked out – Deceit’s well of magic truly used up on meaningless endeavours. Never truly a flame – purely a lie, a deception. “And there was also the note,” Virgil said. “Roman’s the head of the armies; he gave me a signed note that handed over authority over the army to me and ordered me to gather all of them here. Just in case we had to fight and protect the people.”

“What note?” Deceit rasped, but even as he asked the question, Roman could tell that he’d remembered the answer. The little note that Roman had written before agreeing to the deal and had slipped to Virgil underneath his sash. 

“It was hard to focus entirely on evil thoughts,” Roman said, rubbing the back of his head. “It was a real headache.”

Deceit scrambled for other reasons. “But you made Thomas sign the declaration! You were going to be king!”

“I didn’t make him sign anything,” Roman said, picking his nails. “I made him write it out, though. It took a very long time – a very long time where he was being protected by me, until you found out that the human army was a bigger problem and wouldn’t focus on him until they were out of the way. It was harder to make him believe it,” Roman’s voice dried out, cracking. “But I needed to make both of us believe it until it was alright, until you were distracted.”

Deceit blinked. “And you got my armies into the correct position for Virgil to take most of them out, because you know his magic and the way it strikes.”

Roman inclined his head. “I’m a fast learner. Luckily Logan directed his troops perfectly in the position to destroy the shadows that Virgil couldn’t reach.” The human army was beginning to shuffle back towards the castle, a paper-thin shield of purple air circling them – as much as Virgil could manage. “Do I even ask why? Why is he following you?”

Virgil looked down at the ground before peering up at Roman from under his eyebrows. “I suppose someone like you would call it love.”

“Someone like me,” Roman repeated flatly. 

“Mortal,” Virgil said, finally meeting his eyes. “You are mortal.” The words echoed in Roman’s heart. Mortal, human heart. Because Virgil – Virgil didn’t have that. It made an odd sort of sense; of course only an immortal heart could bear the brunt of that amount of raw magic. “You once asked me how old I was, and I began to snap. I’ve forgotten how many decades I’ve walked on this world, Roman.”

Deceit’s mouth thinned. “Fools, both of you.”

“Shut up,” Roman said, savagely. “Why didn’t you just take my appearance? You’ve shown that you can – why didn’t you just take my skin, if you wanted to use me to break Thomas so badly?”

“Because Thomas will always know whether or not it is you,” Deceit said. “After all, you are soul-bonded, are you not?”

Roman’s blank look of utter shock must have communicated his confusion more than his silence did. “Ah,” Deceit sighed in delight. “He and Virgil didn’t tell you what, exactly, their deal was.”

Virgil took a shuddering breath in. “Stop.”

“Their deal?” Roman said, a sense of doom looming in his head as his heart began to hurt.

“Thomas asked two things of Virgil,” Deceit said, a smug enjoyment written over his face. “One, that he could control his magic.”

“Stop!” Virgil shouted, but Roman held up his hand.

Deceit grinned. “Two – that Virgil would find him someone who Thomas could truly fall in love with.”

The sound of hoofbeats broke through Virgil’s shield as it cracked under the pressure of those words, and all three men looked up to see Patton and Thomas cantering a horse towards them. Patton was flying from the saddle the moment that the horse had reared to a halt, flying towards Logan with tears streaking down his face. 

The problem was that Logan was also sprinting towards the person that held his heart and swept him into his arms. Patton pressed his forehead to Logan’s, only able to do so by the fact that Logan was lifting him from the ground. “You’re alright,” Patton was saying, over and over, and Logan then buried his head into Patton’s chest.

Thomas was slower to descend from his horse, ignoring the way that his soldiers had formed a path for him on their way back to the castle, carrying whoever had been injured by the shadows. He made his way steadily over to where Virgil was kneeling, his legs trembling as his hand covered the spot of skin over his heart. “Roman,” he said, “what have you done?”

Roman opened his mouth to explain, but no sound escaped. 

Deceit answered a different question. “You showed Patton where he was,” he groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Roman, you really are a piece of work. When Patton was looking at you, I thought the glance towards the tower was unintentional –“

“I was just lucky that Patton understood,” Roman whispered, not able to look Thomas in the eyes. “I couldn’t risk you disappearing and appearing to torture Thomas in my absence, so I had to send Patton to him – since Patton’s magic could form a shield, could protect him.”

Deceit snarled as Thomas settled his stare on him. “You caused Virgil to be gutted by those wolves,” Thomas said, and a seething hatred that Roman had never even thought him capable of burned his words. “Virgil killed most of them instantly, but you made sure that one slipped through his defences.”

“They were never going to kill him,” Deceit said. “I just wanted to see how much magic he retained after his deal with you. I tried to find out before then – using poison, at your coronation. But Roman dealt with that, and I never got to see.”

“You failed,” Thomas said. “In all the ways that mattered, you failed.”

“Wrong again, King,” Deceit said, and Roman was struck by just how much hatred Deceit had injected into his tone. Deceit’s grudge against Thomas was personal. “I succeeded in the matter of shattering your heart.”

Thomas flinched and Roman felt it.

The beginning of dying.

He’d known what breaking the deal would do. He hadn’t thought it would be painless – but he could feel the pressure building in his heart.

But he disregarded it. 

“I thought that if I let Virgil die, it would hurt you far more than anything else,” he said, and Thomas snapped his gaze to him. 

“Wrong,” crooned Deceit. How he was so eternally chipper despite looking half-dead was beyond Roman. “Do you not wonder why I needed you so entirely badly, Roman?” Roman didn’t have the energy to reply. “I needed you because you are the soulmate that Virgil found for Thomas. I would have no one else involved in the breaking of Thomas’s heart.”

Thomas paled and sank to Virgil’s side. 

“You see,” Deceit said – but not to Roman, anymore. He was talking to the warrior cloaked in violet, who was shaking over Thomas. “You made a huge mistake, darling.”

“Finding Roman wasn’t a mistake,” Virgil snarled. “He was the one that the deal pointed to, that day twelve years ago. He was practically a beacon calling for Thomas.”

Deceit smiled and stood. “But who, exactly, found Roman first on that day? Wandering down the wrong alley at the wrong time,” Deceit crooned, stooping to brush a finger down Roman’s jaw. “My magic was basically begging for me to plant a little deception magic. Think of it like a soulmate anchor. How else can you explain the very reason that Roman beckoned for you so strongly, that day around twelve years ago? How else can you explain why I didn’t fight for him, as you came to claim him for your Prince? I let him go,” Deceit said, smiling, “because I knew Thomas would fall madly in love with him from the moment he met him.”

“Why the hell would you do that to him?” Roman asked, eyes searching for Thomas’s – but the King was shaking too badly. 

Thomas – Thomas loved him? 

“Why would I want the King to suffer the most at this very moment?” Deceit snarled, finally – finally – looking at Thomas directly. “Yes, Virgil, why don’t you explain just why I want to cause the King as much pain as possible?”

“You’re a sick bastard,” Virgil snarled right back, hands shaking.

“You were mine,” Deceit said, his snarl breaking. “And I was yours – we were each others, for the centuries that we’ve existed in this world. We were there when there was literally no one else, Virgil – and yet you had to go, on a particularly hard day, and fall for the first human thing to show you an inch of kindness. As if I weren’t enough – as if an eternity of me loving you was not enough for you.”

“It was killing me,” Virgil whispered. “My magic was _killing_ me, and killing others, and I couldn’t live like that anymore. We’d torture innocents because that’s what our magic wanted to do, and I _didn’t want to live like that anymore!”_

“And so you knelt for the first thing that batted his eyelashes at you,” Deceit interrupted, as though he hadn’t heard. “And you _left me alone._ ” 

Roman flung out his fist and felt eternally glad when it connected to Deceit’s face. “You hate Thomas because Virgil fell in love with him?”

“I could have dealt with it if it was just that,” Deceit snapped, a hand rubbing the place where Roman’s fist had sloppily punched. “After all, Thomas would die within the next century and then Virgil would still be mine. But no – they had to go and make a deal, had to go and change him so much that he now believes that he never wants to see me again.” 

Roman swallowed. “But Virgil is not in love with Thomas.” 

Virgil looked at Roman. “Not for a long while. After all,” he said, a tear rolling down his cheek, “how long can you truly stand to be in love with someone who hates you?” 

Thomas choked. “I don’t hate you. I never hated you.”

Virgil smiled sadly and leant against him. “You did – and who wouldn’t. But you don’t now, and I know that. You’re my brother.” 

Deceit tutted. “To summarize, Roman, since I know that you get confused – Thomas has been utterly in love with you for the past twelve years because he wholeheartedly believed that you were his soulmate, but that is fake – that was just magic that I planted, hoping that I could somehow engineer his demise. What I didn’t expect was you and Virgil to fall for each other and wreck everything.”

“You’re welcome,” Roman wheezed – he couldn’t hide the effects any more. Virgil’s eyes flared. 

“You’re dying now,” Deceit mused. “I suppose that will break Thomas more than you not loving him, anyway.”

“Get away,” Virgil ordered, flinging his arm out. A whip of purple lashed out and would have connected with Deceit had the man not stepped into a pocket of nothing and disappeared. “Roman, my Roman, I’m here –“

Virgil was here, scrambling for Roman as Roman fell against Thomas. 

Thomas was crying, and Roman reached up childishly to cup his face. “Forgive me?”

“I love you, damn you,” Thomas cried, hugging Roman to him. “I’ll always forgive you.”

Patton and Logan appeared over Thomas’s shoulders. “I can make it easier,” Patton said, sobbing as he reached for Roman’s hand. “I can make it painless.”

“Don’t you dare go,” Logan said, kneeling next to where his lover was. “You don’t get to – to just disobey me and then go where I can’t get you back for it –“ 

Roman grasped each of their hands and squeezed. “Roman,” Virgil said and Roman suddenly found himself lying on his back – Thomas supporting his chest, Patton and Logan at his sides, and Virgil’s lap under his head. “Roman, please –“

“Are you going to call me names?” Roman asked and wondered if he was going mad. He didn’t feel pain – just the overwhelming sense that he was loved. 

To his surprise, Virgil exploded with words. “Idiot; you are an idiot, have always been an idiot, from the very first day that I saw you squatting in that hideous pond of god-knows-what to right now-“

Roman smiled at the tangent. “Virgil.”

“Did you know that I hated touch even without my magic making it unbearable? I have always hated the sensation of another’s skin on mine. It would cause my skin to tense underneath, as if it were rebelling against the very essence of touch. But I saw you looking up at me, and I held out my hand to take yours.”

Roman concentrated, but it was getting harder. “Virgil.”

“And I led you to someone who both hated and loved me, wondering what I was doing arguing with you when all I really wanted to do was grab your hand again. And then you took to Thomas like a duck to water, and I feared I’d made a mistake – here were two of the only lifelines I’d ever been thrown, and I’d wasted them on each other. And then – when I was panicking, wondering if I’d ever have a home again – you looked around with that irritating, damning smile and asked me to come.”

Roman huffed a laugh, and Thomas pressed his sash to his chest. “I was scared that you were going to say no.”

“Idiot,” Virgil snapped, and Roman felt a hot tear splatter on his cheek. Crying – Virgil was crying. 

“I love you all,” Roman said – or he hoped that he did. The world was going dark.

“Roman, my Roman, I need you to do something for me.” Roman gave Virgil a sleepy smile and a wink, but it was less because of intention and more because he was losing feeling. “Ask me for help, ask me, please my love, please just ask me to help you –“

Roman died thinking the words.

 

 

_Help me?_


	24. 1 Month and 12 Days after Burning

The night was easy.

Calm.

Thomas had never hated anything more. 

The night had no business being so intrinsically lovely and serene when inside his room, there was chaos – and inside his heart, even more so. 

Thomas hated his quarters, now. He’d hated them from the moment that Roman had locked them both inside, not even bothering to tie him up, knowing that Thomas would stay where he was. He hated them even more, now, with the banners of black swaying outside the hastily repaired glass doors leading to the balcony. He’d broken them by throwing a chair at them, moments after Roman had left him alone a month ago. 

He was used to being caged by his crown, by his throne. He was entirely used to that cage, embellished with fancy titles and decrees. But a cage made from a crown was still a cage. The moment that his own rooms had become a cage, he’d rebelled.

And now he was tired – tired of the night being so beautiful, tired of feeling the cavern inside of his soul where there used to be a person. 

Perhaps that was why the King was sprawled in a very un-king-like manner on his bed, his socks dangling over the edge. A flush brought about by a few solid hours of drinking was settled comfortably across the bridge of his nose, bringing faint freckles into the pale light of the numerous candles.

Because the King did not like the dark. He did not like the banners of black, of mourning, hanging outside his balcony. He blinked slowly, dragging his eyes to perch on a mess of purple hair near his foot.

“Truth or dare, Virge?”

The King was very much drunk. A nearly empty bottle of jade was firmly clenched in his right hand, and the empty bottles strewn about his generous side table suggested enough about his heightened state of silliness. 

“Pass,” Virgil replied. He was sitting on the floor, legs splayed out straight in front of him. He was facing the doors leading to the rest of the castle, leaning against a pillow propped against one of the bed’s frames. He would often watch the doors, no matter what room he was in, waiting for someone to enter that never would. “I’ll drink instead.”

“You can’t keep passing,” Thomas complained, nudging his head. “You have to play.”

Had Thomas been sober – or any less drunk – he would not have been so insistent. Virgil had every right to resent being told what to do or being told to tell the truth about something. But Thomas was glorious in his drunken destruction. He needed laughter, he needed things not to make sense, and he needed Virgil to play into a stupid game whilst they all got stupidly drunk. 

Virgil didn’t look at the King over the edge of the bed – his stare stayed firmly on the door, even as he started swaying. His hand went almost instinctively to the place over his chest, covering the skin that thrummed with proof that he was alive.

The skin that had once held a tether to the man mere meters away from him.

Thomas didn’t have to ask Virgil whether or not he missed the bond. He knew that he missed it – missed concentrating just enough so that he could see the faint trail of purple anchoring them to each other, invisible to everyone else. Thomas and Virgil had never been more messily out of sync – and the bond wasn’t even the start of the reason why.

Virgil sighed, as if he could still sense where Thomas’s thoughts had gone. Maybe he still could – the effect of being bound to Thomas making him aware of everything, just less explicitly. “Truth.”

The word was dangerous. It hung in the air as Thomas tasted it, tested the sound of it. All the things that he wanted to ask – and wouldn’t dare. Could not dare to listen to the answers, even if Virgil wanted to give them.

Across the room from them, Patton snorted awake. He lifted his head from where he’d been drooped over Virgil’s thin bed in the corner, tangled within Logan’s limbs. “What’s all of our worst fears?”

Logan groaned, pulling Patton’s head back into the nook of his chest. “Ignore him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.” He stiffened, Patton’s mouth finding its way to the place where Logan’s neck met with his shoulder. “Patton, I swear –“

“Don’t swear,” Patton muttered against Logan’s skin, his eyes wide as his free hand went scrambling to find the bottle that Logan had confiscated a few minutes prior to him falling asleep. 

The two had been dealing with everything in the best way that they could – entangled in each other, knowing that there a great mystery that linked love and loss together. Thomas could barely stand to watch them. “Thomas feared time, fire and me when he was twelve,” Virgil said, his voice blunt – as if he didn’t care that Patton and Logan were together when he and another could not be.

Where alcohol had made Thomas pliant and soft, it had sharpened the blade of Virgil’s very self. Alcohol had made Patton descend to empty giggles and driven him to escape into the protection of Logan’s arms, but had made Logan dull-eyed as he questioned what he knew and what the alcohol were telling him – as though they were saying different things. “Is it different now?” Logan asked, his hand going up to cover Patton’s mouth and stop him losing his train of thought.

“Oh, yes,” Virgil crooned, but there was no trace of maliciousness. Only loss. “Patton feared himself hurting others, and others hating him,” Virgil continued. “Now he fears funerals. Too many people grieving, too many people that he can’t make happy.”

“Oh, Patton,” Thomas said, although the rest of his sentence was obscured by him taking another long drag from the bottle – all of them had long since abandoned using cups. 

“Logan feared knowledge not being able to save anyone,” Virgil continued, his finger idly tracing the lid of his bottle. “And he fears Patton saying no at the altar tomorrow.”

“Logan!” Patton exclaimed, the loud sound making Thomas nearly drop his bottle. “You’re scared I’ll say no?”

“Virgil,” Logan said, his voice tight, “you’re a complete twit.”

There was a beat where Virgil attempted to hide his sniggers, but the drink he took before had loosened his tight control. Virgil started laughing, and Logan was quick to join in. “Of course he doesn’t fear you saying no,” Virgil said, shooting Patton a smile that could have lit up the world had it not been paired with blank eyes. “He knows that you adore him.”

“I do adore you,” Patton said, kissing Logan’s forehead – much to the man’s embarrassment. “I have never wanted to do anything more than wanting to marry you, Logan.” 

“I did not propose to you for this,” Logan groaned, pushing Patton lightly from the bed. “Give me more drink.”

Patton readily handed him a bottle before standing up, using the desk beside him to halt his swaying. “What was Deceit’s worst fear?”

Virgil stayed silent for a long time – enough time for Patton to drag Logan towards joining Thomas in his large bed and settle themselves into blankets. But he took a long drink before answering. “He feared me leaving him alone. I don’t know what he fears now.” Thomas sighed, tasting the alcohol on his breath, and Virgil continued. “I fear Roman.”

There was a beat of silence.

Roman had always been dangerous – a dangerous person, a dangerous partner, a dangerous friend. He had worn danger like a cloak, flaunting it as he smiled and flirted and winked. Thomas had fallen for that danger and had forgotten it as he grew to love the man underneath.

Now, even his name was full of that forgotten, dead danger.

Thomas didn’t need his bond with Virgil to know that what he’d said was true; Virgil had always been scared of Roman. Scared of Roman leaving him alone, scared of Roman taking Thomas away from him, scared that Roman would hate him. 

And as Roman and danger had become more intertwined, like the messy scrawl of rushed handwriting, Roman’s death been added to the list.

To all of their lists of feared things.

Too late.

Too damned late.

“You’d better be talking about how you’re scared of how devastatingly handsome I am,” Roman said, kicking the door open to avoid upsetting the tray of snacks and more drinks that he’d gone to get. “Either that or my sword skills.”

Thomas took a breath in, as he always did whenever he saw Roman. It always took a beat – to remember that he’d died a month ago, that Thomas had felt Roman’s heart stop and his brown eyes dull and lose that shine of insolence that Roman always had. 

To remember that Roman was here instead of whatever space he’d gone to in that moment.

It was because of that moment that Thomas and Virgil were a fractured mess – their core group of three dying to just a mere two, without a bond or without the one that made them better. It was because of that moment that Thomas now hated the dark and hated that in his dreams, he watched it over and over again.

It had only been a moment, though.

A mere moment before Virgil had screamed, purple light flaring into being like a flame suddenly catching on to an explosive. And another before Roman had taken another shuddering breath and had asked for waffles before his eyes opened again, a purple ring shining around the inner core of his iris before he readily passed out again.

Thomas reminded himself of that. Instead of a bond between him and Virgil, there was now one between Virgil and Roman. He didn’t know the exact terms of their deal – but he knew enough about Virgil to know that he’d lost the shine of immortality. His vast ocean of magic had been swept away as he’d dared to play with the balance of life and death, leaving perhaps a shallow pool where there had once been an endless sea.

Virgil’s shoulders relaxed as Roman shut the door behind him, shooting a confused glance around the room. He’d left them joyfully singing a ballad, not knowing that all of them had fallen to a dead silence the second he’d shut the door and left the four alone without him.

Again.

Thomas brought himself forcibly back to the present to watch as Logan choked, glaring at Roman. “Sword skills? Was that an innuendo?”

Roman grinned as he placed his tray of snacks on the bed, within easy reaching distance of Patton. “Me? Hinting towards an innuendo? Never.”

“Roman’s worst fear was a lobster, once,” Virgil said, and Roman tripped. 

Thomas caught him without looking at him, lowering his body carefully to the spot beside him. Roman patted him on the shoulder and let his hand rest there as he scrambled for a dignified speech. “You know about that?” He asked, flabbergasted. “That was my fear when I was twelve, Virgil, you can’t hold that against me –“

Patton and Logan had long since lost it. “Lobsters?” Patton repeated, tears in his eyes. “You were scared of lobsters?”

“It wasn’t just lobsters,” Roman seethed, and Thomas blinked before falling into laughter himself. His sudden rush of happiness was only slightly dulled as Roman pulled his hand back, using it to throw a pillow at Patton. “I was scared of a great many things!”

“Also true,” Virgil noted, and Roman groaned as his family descended into drunken laughter. 

“They were just freaky,” Roman seethed, curling into a ball and burying himself in blankets. “Too red, and with their eyes –“

“Their eyes,” repeated Logan, choking as he howled. 

“How did this conversation turn to revealing my darkest secret?” Roman asked, a sorrowful sigh escaping from him as he reached for Thomas’s bottle. “I’d like to protest and talk about how Patton’s fear is obviously spiders.”

Patton yelped and kicked Roman. “A fear that makes perfect sense! They could kill you!”

“I’m sure a dedicated lobster could, as well,” Roman mused, rubbing the spot on his leg where Patton had landed his blow. 

“Maybe we should say that a lobster was his cause of death,” Logan said, his eyes sparkling behind his glasses. “It is his funeral in a week.”

Roman pouted, and Patton again fell into laughter, teasing a chuckle from Virgil. Thomas’s chest ached – as if he needed the reminder of the black banners outside his window, mourning the death of the Head Knight. There had been too many soldiers witnessing Roman’s death, and to claim that Virgil had brought him back through sheer will and magic would only heighten the kingdom’s distrust in magic-wielders. Logan had suggested continuing with the act that Roman had indeed died on that field – in order to keep Deceit away.

A lie to keep the magic of deceit away.

For if he believed that Roman was dead, and the others acted their part, he’d leave them all alone – hopefully. Thomas wouldn’t stop hoping. 

“I still don’t know why you have to get married before I get buried,” Roman said, throwing a peanut at Patton – who boldly attempted to catch it in his mouth, but ended up on the floor beside Virgil. “I want to be there.”

Patton sighed and practically crumbled into the floor, slumping onto the carpet. Logan switched back to utter seriousness. “I wanted you to be my best man, Roman.”

Roman gaped at Logan but closed his mouth after a few seconds. “Really? Me?”

Logan smiled. “Who else would I trust to deal with all of the romantic nonsense?”

“I hate the fact that you’re dead,” Patton said, still speaking to the floor. “I really want you there.”

“It’ll be alright, Pat,” Roman told him, huffing a laugh and settling in to a more comfortable position – just mere inches from Thomas’s side. “It’s your special day; whatever you wish for, you’ll get.”

Thomas was again reminded that though Roman had shed his cloak of danger a long time ago, he still crackled with it, still breathed it, still bled it. As the rest of his family made various coos and murmured sweet words, Thomas fell asleep.

He slept better than he had done all month.

*

Thomas straightened his tie as he grinned fiercely at Patton, who looked magnificent in a white. “No doubts?”

“Never about Logan,” Patton replied, shining. Gold shimmered around him, and Thomas hoped that the guests attending the small and private wedding would blame the infectious and unstoppable joy on the pure love of the two who were dealing in a different sort of bond than Thomas was used to – but nevertheless an equally powerful one. 

Today, Patton did not need to touch people to spread his emotions.

Today, he was powerful in his happiness. None could stand beside him and not feel it. 

Virgil poked his head around the door, a pleasant smile on his face. “Everything’s ready for you to make your grand entrance, Pat.”

Patton smiled, with only a hint of disappointment. “I wanted Roman to be here. I needed Roman to be here.”

Virgil smiled back at him, a private joke sliding through their gazes. “Yes. He would have been utterly and disgustingly excited about everything.”

“If he had his way, he would have thrown the most stupidly over the top party. Logan would have hated it,” Thomas said, holding his arm out to Patton. “But he would have loved to see you laugh and dance. Who knows, he might have even allowed Roman a dance. And Roman would have made you wear yellow,” Thomas told Virgil.

“Indeed,” Virgil rolled his eyes and stepped forwards. Like Thomas, he was wearing a suit of purple and gold – with a small yellow flower pinned to his lapel. He took Patton’s left arm, leaving Thomas on Patton’s right. Together, they trooped down the long corridor, leading to the ballroom. “Thank you for dealing with all of our hangovers, by the way.”

Patton laughed. “As if I could let all of us cower in pain on my wedding day.” 

Thomas hummed as the doors to the ballroom came into sight. They had been draped in white, and the guards had even been forced to wear flowers in the gaps of their armour and in the sheaths of their weapons – not that they looked even remotely aggravated. This was Patton’s day; none would oppose whatever wish or whim that he had. “You deserve the happiness you feel with Logan,” Virgil said, shrinking back just a fraction as the doors were opened and the violins and piano started to sing. “You know that I wish you the very best.”

“Logan is the very best,” Patton said, his eyes already on the man in black waiting for him at the end of the white carpet. “I wish for nothing more.”

Thomas and Virgil caught each other’s eyes – Thomas grinned, and Virgil rolled his eyes. “Love is sickening,” Virgil muttered, starting the slow and luxurious walk down the aisle. 

“No cure for it,” Thomas agreed, squeezing Patton’s arm.

“I wouldn’t take a cure even if there was one,” Patton said, his face flushing as Logan turned around to watch him come to him. Logan was glowing – not in the way that Virgil had described him being so on the battlefield.

The Logan on the battlefield was iron, was mountains and ice in his eyes. The Logan waiting at the altar was blushing, the corners of his eyes molten and suspiciously damp. Thomas knew that Patton and Logan wouldn’t notice the world ending at this second; as Virgil made a show of handing over Patton to Logan, the two shone.

Not just as two stars, crashing together in an explosion of liquid light.

Two halves of the same universe, interlinking – no explosion. Just the easy familiarity of singing _here you are, I am here, I am with you, I know you, you are mine._

Thomas and Virgil slipped off to the side, leaving the two to the creation of their own galaxy, turning to face the audience. Thomas found him easily in the crowd, in the way that he always had. Roman was wearing a tan hood, sitting as far to the side as he could have managed – near to the servant’s door, probably having snuck in through it. As if a hood could mask the sense of danger that Thomas felt as he watched him, as easy and natural as breathing. 

But Roman’s eyes were alight from under the shadow of his hood, and Thomas turned to find Virgil looking back at the hooded man with a very familiar sense of eagerness, edged with a chance of annihilation.

The three of them stood in the golden glow that each of them feverishly hoped the audience would blame on the sun and revelled in it.

*

The five of them were raucous, alive, jubilant as they rode their horses down a deserted road, the peaks of the castle in the distance. The sweet smell of the marsh was overpowering, and Thomas filled his lungs – if only to release it in a laugh, erupting at something Logan had quipped at a sulky Roman.

“I can’t believe you snuck in,” Logan was saying, shaking his head to mask the smile that he hadn’t seemed able to get rid of. “Well, no, that’s a lie. I can wholeheartedly believe it.”

“I’m not in the habit of denying grooms their wedding day wishes,” Roman said, shooting a wink at Patton – who was too busy showing off the way that his golden ring glittered in the moonlight at Virgil, who patiently and dutifully cooed whenever it was required. 

Logan groaned and leaned forwards on his horse, prompting it to speed up and catch up to Patton and Virgil in order to save the latter. Roman slowed his horse down to accompany Thomas, and the two watched their family get farther away as the three unwittingly argued and traded insults, unaware that two of their party were falling behind. “You haven’t spoken much to me since I died,” Roman said, suddenly. 

Thomas cursed him and his bluntness, feeling his stomach spiral into nervousness. “You were out of it for weeks afterwards; I was too busy trying to hide your comatose body around the castle to try and talk to your unresponsive self.”

Roman shrugged – he’d woken up fairly recently, with Virgil claiming that death had taken its toll and would give him back when it was ready. “And now that I am not comatose?” 

“I’m finding that I preferred you dead,” Thomas said, rolling his eyes and feeling the crushing guilt rise in his throat in response. It was a joke – he knew it, Roman knew it, and yet he hated it. “That was a lie.”

“I know,” Roman said. 

“I hate that you died,” Thomas said. “I would have followed you if Virgil hadn’t saved you.”

Roman was silent for more than a few tense moments. “Do you say that because you thought that I was your soulmate for more than a decade, or because you genuinely would have missed my company?” 

Thomas bit his lip, finding himself immediately buckling. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you.”

“It made sense when I thought about it,” Roman said. “I should have seen it, really. You willingly leaving your throne to Logan when I’d left or tolerating me as much as you did.”

“And I ordered you to kiss me when I was at the end of my rope. I thought that would have been the biggest give away,” Thomas added, feeling his cheeks catch fire in response. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Roman sighed, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I should have realized and treated you better, rather than just making jokes about how you didn’t have a partner yet.” Thomas winced and looked down the road, where he could just make out the silhouettes of the three in front. Roman swallowed before he spoke again. “Thomas.” Again, the part of Thomas that lived for danger reared its head and purred. Thomas had always loved the way that Roman had spoken his name. “Ask me. Tell me what you need.”

Thomas hated that Roman knew him well enough to know that there was something wrong. “I held onto the scraps of my deal with Virgil,” Thomas confessed in a single breath. “Deceit managed to tear it because Virgil was unconscious, but I wasn’t. I was awake, and I held onto the threads as hard as I could.”

Roman didn’t blink, just steadily continued looking at him. “What does this mean?”

“You felt something tear inside you, right?” Thomas asked, and took Roman’s blink to mean confirmation. “But not entirely. It didn’t hurt because it didn’t tear completely – because the deal that I’ve still barely held together is still there. It means I still feel that you’re my soulmate,” Thomas said. “And I know that you and Virgil – I know there’s something there. I want to get rid of it, let the deal go – but I wanted something first.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been in love with my soulmate for twelve years, only to find out that he is not my soulmate and that my heart has been tortured for years for no reason other than to satisfy a sadist.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Roman said. “Just tell me what you need.”

“I don’t need it,” Thomas said, fast. “It’s just a want. You can tell me no, it’s probably for the best –“

“Thomas,” Roman repeated, patiently. “Ask me.”

Thomas swallowed. “I want to know what it feels like to kiss my soulmate before I let you go.”

Roman closed his eyes. “Will it hurt you whether I disagree or agree?”

“No; neither will hurt me at this point. But I just want to know, before I let it go entirely.”

Roman nodded, and Thomas gasped as he suddenly reached over to tug Thomas’s horse to a halt. It was a movement that he’d seen before, that he recognised. Only instead of merely embracing him, Roman now took Thomas’s face in his hands and ran his thumb down the curve of Thomas’s cheek. “I’m sorry that I can’t be your soulmate,” Roman whispered, and pressed his lips to Thomas’s.

Thomas forgot how to breathe. He forgot everything – the strain in his legs, the weird way that Roman was leaning over his saddle in order to maintain his balance. He forgot everything except the way that Roman’s lips were on his, the heat of them, the way that Thomas’s mouth opened, and he murmured Roman’s name into his partner’s lips. 

They’d always fitted in the odd way – the way they had always managed to be in sync. This was the reason why.

Thomas didn’t realize that he was crying until he forced himself to pull away from the heat of Roman’s mouth and suppressed the aching fullness of his heart. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand, not daring to touch his lips with his fingertips to test if they were still hot. 

“I’ll let go now,” Thomas said. “Thank you.”

Roman’s lips trembled as he wiped his own eyes, a trail of silver mapping the way down his cheekbone. 

Thomas closed his eyes as he felt for the shattered remains of his heart, which had once been held together with solid chains of purple. Now, they were barely being tied together with a wavering threat of pale pink, the strings snapping even before he dove into that dark place in his soul and ripped.

He would not chain Roman to the role he was never destined for.

Even if it meant that he had to tear his own heart out.

*

Roman felt it when Thomas tore the remaining fraction of the bond that he’d spent so long salvaging – felt a strange absence in his chest that he hadn’t realized was full until now. He looked over to his King, worry working itself into his hands. The kiss had annihilated him, everything within him singing that it was right, that this was where he was meant to be, that this was his destiny.

But he’d felt enough of Deceit’s magic to know when something inside of him was lying.

“Oh, no,” Thomas whimpered, and Roman’s heart threatened to crack.

“What?” Roman said, panic flaring.

“I can’t believe I kissed you,” Thomas groaned, a blush dominating his face even as he tried to cover it. “You’re my brother, and I kissed you, that is so weird –“

“Technically I kissed you,” Roman said, relief cooling the panic’s flames. “But I’m glad that you still tolerate me even when I’m not your soulmate.”

“I can’t believe that Deceit managed to make me fall for an insufferable moron,” Thomas lamented, nudging his horse into a light trot. “I must have been a fool.”

“You said it, not me,” Roman said, and smiled. “You liked me – I am going to enjoy rubbing that fact in your face.”

“You like Virgil,” Thomas pointed out, raising his eyebrows. “The literal master of fear is who you like. I don’t think you can judge me on who I fancied until a few seconds ago.”

“Ah, you fool,” Roman sighed, and blinked as he realized that they’d crossed into the marshlands. “I am nothing if not a hypocrite.” 

“And dead,” Thomas said. “What do I do with all of your wages, now that you’re six feet below?” 

“Patton and I were talking about that, actually,” Roman said. “Buy a castle and turn it into the largest and nicest homeless shelter that you can. It should kickstart your homeless act and really help a lot of people.”

Thomas grinned, and then proceeded to wince as Logan and Virgil’s voices soared, arguing about the dangers of the marshland at night. “And you will have the rest of it?”

“I can think of a few uses for the rest of it,” Roman agreed. “Patton and Logan better spare no expense when throwing my funeral, though. I want everybody weeping dramatically into handkerchiefs.”

“Does that include Patton?”

“No, Patton is excused from any and all mourning,” Roman said. “Logan, however, I want to collapse with grief in front of my empty coffin. I will accept no other outcome.”

“I’m not telling Logan to do that,” Thomas protested, sniggering. “He’d kill me for suggesting that – you have to ask him.”

“Fine,” Roman said. “I will.”

“It’s your funeral,” Thomas said, and froze.

Roman looked at him, and the two roared with such laughter that the three in front of them fell silent as they finally came to the conclusion that perhaps they should wait. “It _is_ my funeral,” Roman laughed, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “You’re so right!”

“As ever, murder seems like the only beneficial option when it comes to you,” Logan told him, dismounting from his horse and immediately moving to help Patton down, wincing as the marsh squelched under his foot. “Is this it?”

“This is indeed it,” Roman smiled, looking up.

It had been so long since he’d seen the treehouse, old and damp, high above the branches of the trees. “I can’t believe that we built it strong enough to last this long,” Virgil told Thomas, his eyes going straight to the hint of red that rimmed the pleasant brown that Roman no longer found an unexplained obsession with. 

Thomas patted the rickety rope ladder with the ease of seeing an old friend. “Can you remember nearly standing on a nail that one time?”

“I believe I threatened to shove it somewhere so deep that you’d be getting your regular iron intake for the next century,” Virgil replied, idly.

“You were always far too proud of that threat,” Thomas snorted as he and Roman dismounted. “Patton, don’t start crying now!”

“I can’t help it,” Patton said, stepping out from under the blanket Logan had brought for him and into the circle of Roman’s arms. “I can’t believe that it’s your plan to leave us again.”

Roman hugged him tightly, meeting Logan’s gaze from over the top of Patton’s head. “Technically, it was your husband’s plan – and stop looking so angry, Logan, you know that you love being called his husband.”

“It’s not – the worst,” Logan admitted, red spots burning at the top of his cheekbones. “But I was so unused to you actually listening to my plans that I didn’t think you’d go through with this one –“

“I’ll come back often,” Roman said, and gasped as Patton squeezed him far too tight.

“Promise?”

“I promise,” Roman said, and Patton pulled back just enough to let him breathe. “I can’t leave you without your most handsome friend for long, can I?”

“You say that, but you died and left me for a solid few seconds,” Patton told him, scorn laced with sadness edging their way into his watery smile. “I thought that I would never be alright again.”

“I’m not still dead, you know,” Roman said, poking him in the side. 

“I still feel sad,” Patton snapped at him, abandoning the circle of his arms to throw an arm around Virgil and draw Thomas into a bone-crushing hug. “You still died in front of me. I felt you leave us.”

“It was just death, darling. I wouldn’t let that keep me from you.”

Virgil tutted as he bumped fists with Logan. “And I won’t let him die again, Patton – not easily, anyway.”

“I suppose I am a bit happier that you’re taking Virgil and Thomas with you,” Patton pouted. “But Thomas, are you sure that you’re okay leaving Logan and I in charge?”

“I am going to come back with experience and personal knowledge of how I can make this kingdom better,” Thomas said, holding his hands up so that Logan could easily reach down and hug him. “Logan is more than capable of being Regent, and Patton – you’re more than capable of keeping him in line.”

“I don’t need babysitting,” Logan said, rolling his eyes as he hesitantly held out his hand for Roman to shake – and groaned as Roman dramatically embraced him on his tip toes. 

“And they also said that I didn’t need to hunt Deceit whilst pretending to be dead so that he wouldn’t expect me,” Roman said, releasing him. “But look where we’re off to.”

Thomas made a shooing motion to him, and so Roman lightly braved the rotting ropes of the ladder and heaved himself into the treehouse. He heard Thomas going over his last instructions to a sincere Logan and a tearful Patton, and felt Virgil join him rather than hearing him climb.

“We’re going on another adventure,” Roman murmured, aware that they truly weren’t out of earshot of those below them. “How are you feeling?”

“Surprisingly, not anxious,” Virgil said, and Roman heard the smile behind his words. “And obviously you’re feeling rather pleased that you get to do what you’ve wanted to do since you were twelve – go on an adventure with a home to go back to.”

Roman felt him sit next to him on the wooden floor. “You are the adventure that I craved and the home I want to go back to, you know.”

He heard Virgil’s breath catch. “I didn’t know.”

“I told you that I loved you,” Roman said, and felt Virgil slyly inch closer.

“I didn’t know if Deceit made you say it – I tried to get you to look at me to see if you were lying, but you just left me tied to the bed.”

Roman tested his bravery. “Next time, I’ll join you.”

Virgil laughed. “So I am an adventure – what did you get at the end of it?”

“Only knowledge, regrettably,” Roman said, shaking his head. “Only the knowledge of just how much I am hopelessly and helplessly in love with you.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Oh, yes,” Roman said, peeking up through the cracks of the roof to see the splintered fractions of the moon. “If I can have this – if only for a moment longer – then everything was worth it.”

Virgil hummed as he moved, climbing neatly into Roman’s lap and placing his arms around his shoulders. “And there’s no problem with this?”

“There is a problem,” Roman ground out. “Many. The first – no one should look this good at this abysmal time in the morning.”

“Good word!” Logan called up from below, and Roman groaned into Virgil’s shoulder as he felt his ears burn.

“Next problem?” Virgil whispered, his lips brushing the shell of Roman’s burning ear.

“You aren’t kissing me right this second,” Roman said, his arms travelling around Virgil’s waist to hold him closer.

“And what should I do about this problem of yours?” Virgil said, pushing Roman’s face away from the home of his chest.

“I would very much like you to help me with it,” Roman breathed, looking at Virgil’s onyx eyes – a ring of violet around the iris, just like in his. The only visible mark of their deal – to live together, to die together. “Help me?”

“Ass,” Virgil said, and kissed him.

It was not the kiss of utter destruction that Thomas’s had been.

It was simply salvation.

*

By the time Roman had found the capacity for thinking again, the five of them were back on horseback.

“I love you all,” Patton called, and sent butterflies of gold to kiss Roman, Virgil and Thomas on the tips of their noses, filling each of them with warmth that would undoubtedly last as long as Patton was within range. “You all have pieces of our chocolate wedding cake in your bags, I packed them as a surprise but I’m bad at keeping surprises a secret –“

“You only needed to keep quiet about it for a few more seconds, sweet,” Logan said, rubbing his forehead in utter exasperation. “How did you mess that up?”

“Talent,” Patton replied, flashing him a smile that would likely stop all of Logan’s thoughts for the next minute. Sure enough, Logan opened his mouth to call a farewell, but no words came out – so he merely waved a hand and smiled, the other hand reaching to hold Patton’s hand. 

Thomas began the journey away from them, leading their trio deeper into the marsh – knowing exactly the path to start their hunt through the kingdom, the memory of their adventures twelve years ago like worn tracks in their hearts.

“The hunt for Deceit,” Thomas said, and glanced back to where Virgil and Roman were smiling at each other poisonously. “Are you two already fighting?”

“He called me an ass,” Roman said, waving in Virgil’s direction with an air of betrayal. “That’s name calling, and that’s mean.”

“He is an ass,” Virgil shrugged, and Thomas muttered something under his breath that Roman chose not to hear.

“Are we all ready?” Thomas tried again, to which Virgil shrugged eloquently and Roman winked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” In response, Thomas stuck his tongue out at him just as the sun peaked over the horizon, illuminating the expanse of Thomas’s kingdom.

Roman suddenly came to three realizations in the way that one could suddenly come awake after dreaming that they were falling. He’d always known them. They’d shaped him. 

One – all throughout his life, he’d dreamed big. He’d dreamed of exploits, adventures, witches, swords and magic. He had dreamed all of that, thinking that it was preferable to being awake. He had been a fool.

Two – he’d found somewhere where he belonged.

Three – Where he truly belonged was not a castle. It was in between these two people, linked by their souls and their love and their past, walking to nowhere in particular and arguing about everything.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT'S IT!!!! I AM DONE!!!
> 
> Thank you all genuinely so much for reading this monster of a fic - I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!!! To all of u who commented, ur the actual best people and I appreciate u - and to my real-life friend who spent time listening to me rant nonstop about this fic and read it with me, ur the best too (also it's turnip <3)
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed and survived (and at least ship prinxiety a little bit)!!!!  
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> This work was ABSOLUTELY inspired by this video:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNqneoesKvw
> 
> Link to their channel is here:  
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSn_XcHYoMcbRlLwDYVYJsw
> 
> I've never been as inspired as I was with this video, seriously, I hope I did it justice!


End file.
